Professor Genevieve Helleringer

Genevieve Helleringer is a professor ESSEC Business School (Paris) and Oxford University. Her teaching and research focuses on Business Law: Corporate Law, Financial Law, and Contract Law, with a comparative and behavioural approach. 

Since 2021, Genevieve has been a member of the Board of Appeal for the European Banking Authority, the European Securities Market Authority and the European Insurance and Pensions Authority. In addition, Genevieve also regularly acts as an expert. She has been cross-examined as an expert witness in the English High Court.  She also assists corporations as an experienced commercial mediator and arbitrator. 

Geneviève received her PhD in Civil Law from the Sorbonne (2010) and her Juris Doctor in Common Law from Columbia Law School (1999). She had previously studied Economics and Management at ESSEC Business School and Sciences Po Paris. She also holds an MSc in Behavioural Sciences (2014) from Oxford. 

Before completing her doctoral work, Geneviève worked for Shiseido in Japan, and later practised corporate and commercial law at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York and at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Paris (1999-2004). 

Geneviève has been a visiting professor at UCLA in 2019 and Columbia in 2023, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute Hamburg (2010, 2012) and at the Israeli Institute of Advanced Studies (2020-21).

Geneviève’s academic research focuses on Business Law: corporate governance, ESG, stewardship, VC and private equity, M&A, corporate finance and contracts. She has published on these topics in books and international journals, including the Berkeley Business law Journal, Columbia Journal of European Law, Illinois Law Review, Australian International Law Journal. Her monograph on contract terms (2010) was awarded four prizes and her book Operating Law in a Global Context (2017) is widely used by researchers and practitioners. Geneviève is also co-author of Goode and McKendrick’s Transnational Commercial Law (3rd ed, due 2023) and an editor of the Journal of Financial Regulation (Oxford University Press) and of the Oxford Business Law Blog.

Tri-cultural background French, Anglo-American, German 

Education

• PhD Law, Paris Sorbonne university
• Juris Doctor, Columbia Law School
• ESSEC Business School Paris & Singapore
• Sciences-Po Paris
• MSc in Psychology, Oxford university
• Undergraduate Maths & Philosophy

Professional Qualifications

• Paris Bar
• New York Bar
• Accredited Mediator

Dispute Resolution

Commercial mediator and arbitrator (over 50 mediations under the auspices of the French Federation of Commerce, PRIME Finance or mandated by Thalès, Airbus, Saint-Gobain and oher international corporation)

Expert witness in French and English Contract & Commercial Law (cross-examined in the English High Court, including in high-value telecommunication FRAND Licence disputes)

Advice to Corporate Executives 

Corporate governance & ESG, commercial contracts, financial regulation: analysis of corporate issues and design of innovative solutions appropriate to the legal and economic context. Advice to: 

• listed companies (e.g., Business Objects, Lafarge, Danone).
• non-listed companies (e.g., Frans Bonhomme, Bloomberg).

as a lawyer, in the context of friendly and hostile take-overs, M&A, IPO or LBO (management packages, shareholder, investment, senior and junior debt contracts).

Other interests

• Literature, and creative writing.
• Art (portrait collector and critic).
• Music (piano, singing).
• Mentoring for inclusion and diversity.

Married, 2 children