Georgina Tsagas had the unique opportunity, with the support of the Law School, to share her current research on varieties of shareholders with renowned academics and practitioners from the University Of New South Wales Law School, Melbourne Law School, the University of Technology Sydney and the Centre for International Finance and Regulation Australia. Although Australia is a market based economy, it is characterized by a progressive outlook on how corporate governance of corporations can reflect on broader environmental and social concerns. Georgina presented her paper ‘Varieties of Shareholders as a driver of company law reform’at the  2016 CLTA Conference entitled 'Enduring Issues in, and Reflections on, Corporate Law and Policy over the Past 25 years' hosted by The University of NSW Australia (UNSW) School of Taxation & Business Law, Sydney Australia, sponsored by Lexis Nexis, University of New South Wales Business School and the Governance Institute of Australia (31^st Jan-2^nd Feb 2016). Georgina’s paper drew attention to the question of ‘who the fictional shareholder to whom corporate managers owe a duty to’ is, by analysing the investor horizons and incentives of different types of shareholders. The paper provides a shareholder taxonomy that challenges the efficacy of the shareholder primacy norm prevalent in UK company law.

The conference represented the voices of the various corporate law scholars in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region addressing topical themes, such as for example the difficulties in regulating corporations’ phoenix activity and a comparative study of the regulation of crowdfunding across different jurisdictions.  At the conference special tribute was paid to Professor Paul Redmond, inaugural Sir Gerard Brennan Professor at UTS and Emeritus Professor of the UNSW (Dean of the Faculty of UNSW 1996-2002) for his contribution to Australian corporate law scholarship over the past 30 years.