Klaus J. Hopt is a professor and director emeritus at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. From 1974 to 1995, he taught in Tübingen, Florence, Berne, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Munich. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Harvard, NYU, and Columbia. Prof. Hopt served as a judge in the Court of Appeals in Stuttgart from 1981 to 1985. He was a member of the High Level Group of Company Law Experts, European Commission (2001-2002), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the supervisory board of the Deutsche Börse AG (2003-2005), the board of the European Corporate Governance Institute (2005-2011), and the International Advisory Board of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (2011-2014). Prof. Hopt also served as an expert for the German Parliament, German Federal Constitutional Court, various German Ministries, German Central Bank, European Commission, Bank for International Settlements, Bulgaria, and World Bank. He has publications on corporate governance and boards in the American Journal of Comparative Law volumes 59 (2011) and 61 (2013) as well as other books and law reviews. Prof. Hopt is a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar.