Steward Ownership: Corporate Law Outside the Box
About the Program
Join Professor Dr. Anne Sanders of the University of Bielefeld, Germany, in conversation with Brooklyn Law School’s Professor Dana Brakman Reiser for a scholarly exploration of steward ownership's two core pillars.
- Perpetual self-determination legally insulates a company from hostile acquisition by safeguarding the enduring control of its stewards.
- A binding purpose-orientation ensures the firm's profits will be directed toward advancing an organizational mission beyond shareholder value maximization.
While the steward ownership concept has long been used in Europe, it has been growing in the U.S. since the American retailer Patagonia adopted it in 2022. The program will address how family businesses, employee-owned companies, social enterprises, and commercializing nonprofits are utilizing these innovative governance structures to preserve their missions over time.
Sponsored by Brooklyn Law School’s Center for the Study of Business Law and the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law.
About the Speaker
Professor Dr. Anne Sanders has held the chair for Civil Law, Company Law, the Law of Family Businesses and Judicial Studies and served as director of the Institute for Family Businesses at Bielefeld University, Germany, since 2018 and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School. Her research interests lie in corporate law and business ownership, family law and comparative judicial studies. Her current projects focus on long-term oriented, mission-driven business ownership in family businesses and steward ownership structures including foundation- and purpose-trust-controlled firms like Patagonia, Bosch, Carlsberg and Novo Nordisk. In addition to her scholarship on these topics, she has provided guidance on them to the European Law Institute, members of the German Federal Parliament, and the European Parliament in a commissioned study. Before joining the faculty of law at Bielefeld, Professor Sanders held positions as associate professor at the University of Bonn (2013-2017) and Professor II of the faculty of law at the University of Bergen, Norway. She clerked at the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) (2009-2011) and served as a part-time judge at the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, Germany (2019-2021). In 2016, 2017 and 2018, she was the recipient of teaching awards at the Universities of Bonn and Bielefeld.
More Information
General inquiries: events@brooklaw.edu | (718) 780-0321
Accessibility
Requests for reasonable accommodation should be made to accommodations@brooklaw.edu at least 10 days before the event. We will do our best to address requests made after this time.
Important Note
Brooklyn Law School is committed to providing a forum for the discussion of important and sometimes controversial legal and social issues. The Law School provides space for dialogue and debate but does not endorse the views expressed by speakers, faculty, or participants at its events. The perspectives shared are those of the individuals involved.