Speakers - DIGITALISATION AND COMPANY LAW

Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques

Member of the European Parliament

Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques

Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur of the Initiative on UDCL in the JURI Committee

SIMONA CONSTANTIN

Deputy Head of Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová, European Commission

SIMONA CONSTANTIN

Simona Constantin is since December 2022 the Deputy Head of Cabinet of Vĕra Jourová, Vice-President for Values and Transparency. Between 2014-2019 she worked as a member of the Cabinet of Mrs. Jourová, Commissioner for Justice and Consumers at that time and then from 2019 continued as a member of Cabinet for the Vice-President Jourová. In these roles Simona has been working on matters such as rule of law, media freedom, Artificial Intelligence, civil and company law, legal affairs. She led the work on numerous legislative proposals in the area of civil justice and company law, including on cross-border operations and digitalisation. Between 2011 and 2014 she worked on climate change related policies as a Legal Officer in the Directorate General for Climate Action and in 2014 for a short period of time as a member of the Cabinet of the Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard. She was a member of the Commission’s team on international climate negotiations in the UN context and has had various coordination roles. Prior to the European Commission, she worked for the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands as a researcher in European law. She also worked in national public administration at the European Institute of Romania, Bucharest between 2006-2007. She holds a Master’s Degree in International and European Law (LLM) from the University of Amsterdam Law School, the Netherlands and a general law degree from the University of Craiova, Romania.

RALF SAUER

Deputy Head of Unit “Company Law”, European Commission

RALF SAUER

Ralf Sauer is the Deputy Head of the Company Law Unit in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers at the European Commission. The department covers company law files like the recent Commission proposal on “upgrading digital company law”, as well as corporate governance matters such as the Commission proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. Before his recent appointment to the company law unit, Mr Sauer for many years co-headed the Commission’s international data protection unit. As such, he was one of the key negotiators of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the new framework for transatlantic data transfers. He has also led the European Commission’s work on model data protection contracts, the so-called Standard Contractual Clauses. Previously, Ralf Sauer worked for almost 10 years in the European Commission’s Legal Service, among others representing the Commission before the European courts in competition and State aid cases, and as an associate lawyer for German law firm Hengeler Mueller. He holds an LL.M. and doctoral degree from Yale Law School.

Amanda Cohen Benchetrit

Commercial Magistrate, Adviser to the Spanish Ministry of Justice

Amanda Cohen Benchetrit

Judge specialised by the General Council of the Judiciary in commercial matters, with more than twenty years of professional experience. Since 2018, she has been advising the Ministry of Justice on national and international commercial matters, having participated in the negotiation before the Council of the European Union of the most relevant directives in the field of insolvency, company law and corporate governance. Representative of Spain in Working Groups I (MSMEs), V (Insolvency) and of the CLOUT jurisprudence system of UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). Spanish representative on the European Commission’s group of experts on company law (CLEG). Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Alcalá. Associate professor of the Judicial School since 2018 and of the new promotions of commercial judges since 2021. Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain and member of its Private International Law Section. Member of the Sustainability Advisory Board, which reports to the Spanish Accounting and Auditing Institute, with the mission of establishing the Spanish position on sustainability (financial reporting and sustainable corporate governance). Author of several publications specialising in commercial law, particularly in the corporate and insolvency fields.

PETER STELMASZCZYK

President, Council of the Notariats of the European Union

PETER STELMASZCZYK

Dr. Peter Stelmaszcyzk est notaire à Burscheid (Allemagne). De 2008 à 2015, il a travaillé comme avocat au cabinet d’avocats international Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer à Cologne dans le domaine du droit des sociétés et des fusions et acquisitions.
En 2013, il obtient son doctorat en droit de l’Université de Cologne (thèse de doctorat sur « L’augmentation de capital en espèces sans droits de souscription dans les scénarios d’OPA hostiles »). En 2015, il devient candidat-notaire et exerce jusqu’en 2021 la fonction de directeur de la Chambre fédérale des notaires allemands (Bundesnotarkammer) à Bruxelles.
Dr. Peter Stelmaszcyzk est également l’auteur de nombreuses publications scientifiques sur le thème du droit des sociétés.

JENS BORMANN

President, German Federal Chamber of Notaries (Bundesnotarkammer)

JENS BORMANN

Dr. Jens Bormann is notary in Ratingen (Germany) and since 2015 also President of Bundesnotarkammer in Berlin. Furthermore, since 2022, he is Vice-President for Europe of the International Union of Notaries.
After his law studies in Constance and Geneva and his legal clerkship in Freiburg and Paris, Dr. Jens Bormann was research fellow at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In 2002 he pursued his postgraduate studies at Harvard Law School with a Master of law degree (LL.M.) and was awarded a doctorate (Dr. iur.) in Freiburg. From 2006 to 2011, Dr. Jens Bormann was secretary general of Bundesnotarkammer. In 2017 he was appointed Honorary Professor at Leibniz University Hannover.
During his term of office as President of Bundesnotarkammer, he accompanied numerous legislative reforms and digitalization projects at the crossroads between the notarial profession, the judiciary and administrative authorities.

CORRADO MALBERTI

Notary and Chair of the CNUE Company Law Working Group

CORRADO MALBERTI

Corrado Malberti is notary since 2008 and Chairperson of the Working Group Company Law of the CNUE since 2011. He has been Associate Professor of Commercial Law at University of Trento since 2015. Previously, from 2010 to 2015, he was Associate Professor of Commercial Law at University of Luxembourg. He graduated from University of Milan. He completed an LLM at University of Chicago and a PhD in Commercial Law at Bocconi University, where he was also Postdoctoral Researcher, and taught courses in commercial law, financial market regulation, and competition law. He has published widely in the fields of company law, financial market regulation, and competition law, in English, Italian and French.

Sebastian Sick

Hans-Boeckler Foundation

Sebastian Sick

Sebastian Sick is a lawyer and head of the commercial law unit of the Hans Böckler Foundation, a non-profit organization in Düsseldorf. Sebastian provides advice to employee representatives on supervisory boards on social and codetermination issues. He is a national and international expert on the topics of European company law, corporate governance, and codetermination rights, as well as co-author of the standard work & “Supervisory Practice – Handbook for Employee Representatives on Supervisory Board”.

He has also served as expert on the German government commission for corporate codetermination (Biedenkopf Commission II), in hearings of the German parliament and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), and for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), among others.

Sebastian studied law at the University of Cologne and completed his postgraduate studies in European integration with an LL.M.Eur. (Master of European Law) at Saarland University, complemented by a number of practical placements in New York and Sarajevo.

In 2001 he won the Hans Werner Osthoff Prize for achievements in European law. Sebastian subsequently obtained his doctorate in 2007 with a comparative study of corporate governance practices in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Ramón Franco Cerame

CEO of Mr. Houston Tech Solutions

Ramón Franco

Aerospace Engineer, specialized in Avionics. He began his career journey by participating in various projects within the National Defense sector, where he had the opportunity to be part of the team for the EFA program that developed the Eurofighter combat aircraft.

In the year 2000, he co-founded the company Mr. Houston, with the goal of helping businesses boost their operations through technology. For over 20 years now, he has led different areas of the company, working to strengthen Mr. Houston’s service portfolio, which includes a software factory, Artificial Intelligence, IT Network Management, and Cybersecurity.

Currently, he is the CEO of Mr. Houston

Tianyu Yuan

CEO of Codefy

Tianyu Yuan

Tianyu Yuan is a German qualified lawyer and CEO of the technology startup Codefy. The AI-technology developed by Codefy is utilized by the judiciary, administration and leading companies in Germany. Tianyu studied robotics and law. He has worked for leading law firms in Germany, Singapore, England and China, was research associate at the University of Heidelberg, and visiting researcher at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Besides, Tianyu lectures at various universities, institutions and the German Judicial Academy on the topics of legal tech and Artificial Intelligence in law.

FRÉDÉRIC SIMON

Editor, Euractiv

FRÉDÉRIC SIMON

Frédéric Simon is EURACTIV’s energy and environment editor. A French-English bilingual, Frédéric joined the company in 2003 as telecoms reporter and has since covered almost every aspect of EU policy, including the euro zone debt crisis. For ten years, Frédéric was also Brussels correspondent for France24, the international TV channel.

Andreas Schwab

Member of the European Parliament

Andreas Schwab

Dr Andreas Schwab was born in Rottweil in 1973, studied law at the University of Freiburg and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, and completed an LL.M. master’s degree at the University of Wales. He is a lawyer and teaches at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Dr Andreas Schwab has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2004. He is Chairman of the Parliamentary Delegation for Northern cooperation and for relations with Switzerland and Norway and to the EU-Iceland Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Economic Area (EEA)”. As coordinator of the EPP group in the influential Internal Market Committee (IMCO) of the European Parliament, Dr Schwab successfully pushed important legislative projects through the Parliament, such as the Consumer Rights Directive (2011), the Network and Information Security Directive (2013), the Directive on Antitrust Damages Actions (2014) and the European Competition Network Directive (ECN +) (2018). He authored key European Parliament resolutions on Single Market Governance (2012), Supporting Consumer Rights in the Digital Single Market (2014) and the Digital Taxation INI Report (2021). During the current mandate, Dr Schwab was the rapporteur of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)(2022).