On August 4, 2023, the University of Tokyo hosted an international symposium on corporate law and corporate governance, featuring five world-renowned experts, including Professor Sang Yop Kang from the Peking University School of Transnational Law. At this symposium, Professor Kang delivered a presentation titled “Unveiling the Impacts from the Interplay of Stewardship, Shareholder Activism, and ESG: A Focus on the National Pension Service in Korea.”
During his presentation, Professor Kang discussed the dual nature of the National Pension Service (NPS) in Korea. He highlighted its advantage in mitigating the “problems of collective action” within the capital market and fostering an environment that enhances investor protection. However, he also pointed out significant drawbacks. These include the potential for increased state intervention in the capital market, the use of ESG as a pretext to justify subpar performance of the NPS, and the risk of controlling shareholders exploiting ESG initiatives to mask their agency problems.
Professor Sang Yop Kang holds a full professorship with tenure in Law at Peking University, School of Transnational Law. His areas of teaching and research include corporate governance, corporate law (theory and with perspectives from the U.S., Korea, and China), securities regulations, M&As, and law and economics. He also focuses on ESG, capital markets, financial market regulations, banking policies, and more. His expertise extends to startups and venture capitals, competition law (anti-trust), the 4th industrial revolution, corporate groups, institutional investors, hedge funds, private equity funds, shareholder activism, stewardship, law and finance, executive compensation, Chinese economic policies, Chinese corporate governance, East Asian economies and legal systems, and political economy.
Professor Kang publishes numerous articles in academic journals such as the Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, the Berkeley Business Law Journal, the Virginia Law & Business Review, the Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business, Tsinghua China Law Review, etc. Also, with world-leading scholars, Professor Kang is a coauthor of “Law and Finance of Related Party Transactions” (Cambridge University Press), “Comparative Corporate Governance” (Edward Elgar), and “Global Shareholder Stewardship” (Cambridge University Press). Moreover, he coauthored “Regulation on Corporate Groups,” an academically significant book published in Korea. He has been serving as a policy advisor for the Korean government and National Assembly (Congress) on regulatory policies such as policies about large corporate groups and the separation of banking and commerce.
Professor Kang holds J.S.D. (Doctor of the Science of Law) degree at Columbia University School of Law. He is a Research Member of the ECGI (European Corporate Governance Institute), the most prestigious global academic association for the corporate governance scholarship (law, economics, and finance). Professor Kang is a lawyer. Also, he is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and a FRM (Financial Risk Manager) charter-holder. In addition, he is an arbitrator at the SCIA (Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration). Before he studied law, he studied economics and finance and used to be a fund manager in the capital market. He also composes piano pieces.
