Introduction by Professor Ronald J. Gilson, the Meyers Professor of Law and Business, Stanford Law School; Commentary of Lecture by Professor David F. Larcker, the James Irvin Miller Professor of Accounting, Stanford Graduate School of Business

The corporation is one of the most important and remarkable institutions in the world. It affects all our lives continuously. It feeds, entertains, houses and, employs us. It generates vast amounts of revenue for those who own it and it invests a substantial proportion of the wealth that we possess. But the corporation is also the cause of immense problems and suffering, a source of poverty and pollution, and its failures are increasing. While governments are subject to repeated questioning and scrutiny, the corporation receives relatively little attention.

In this lecture, Professor Colin Mayer will discuss his book Firm Commitment published by Oxford University Press in February 2013. It will discuss how the corporation is failing us, why it is happening now, what are the consequences and what we should do to fix it. It will set out an agenda for reform which will re-establish the corporation as an institution that we value and trust.

About Colin Mayer:

Colin Mayer is the Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He is an Ordinary Member of the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, a member of the UK Government Natural Capital Committee, and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute.

Colin Mayer was the first professor at the Saïd Business School in 1994, the Peter Moores Dean of the Business School between 2006 and 2011, and the first Director of the Oxford Financial Research Centre between 1998 and 2005. He has served on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and assisted in establishing prestigious networks of economics, law and finance academics in Europe at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the European Corporate Governance Institute. He was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, the first Leo Goldschmidt Visiting Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Business School, Université de Bruxelles, and has had visiting positions at Columbia, MIT and Stanford universities.

Colin Mayer was chairman of Oxera Ltd. between 1986 and 2010 and was instrumental in building the company into what is now one of the largest independent economics consultancies in Europe. He has consulted for numerous large corporations and for governments, regulators and international agencies around the world.

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