This presentation will set out the role played by the “public interest directors” appointed to the Irish banks in the wake of the Irish Government’s blanket deposit guarantee in 2008. Based on private interviews, Professor Clarke will describe the directors’ experiences in seeking to fulfil their statutory duty to act in the public interest. This statutory duty will be compared to section 172 of the UK Companies Act 2006 and recent proposals by the UK Government to provide greater stakeholder input at board level will be discussed in this context.

To RSVP for this event, please email clmr@unsw.edu.au

Speaker Bio:

Professor Blanaid Clarke is the McCann FitzGerald Chair in Corporate Law at Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests include corporate governance, financial services and takeover regulation and she has published widely in these areas. She works with the Irish Takeover Panel and is a member of the European Securities and Markets Authority Takeover Bids Network. She represents Ireland on the OECD’s Corporate Governance Committee and is a member of the European Commission’s Informal Company Law Expert Group. She also serves on the board of the Irish Central Bank. Previously, she was a member of the European Commission’s Reflection Group on the Future of EU Company Law and is one of the founding members of UCD’s Institute of Directors’ Centre for Corporate Governance.