Henry T. C. Hu

Professor Henry T. C. Hu holds the Allan Shivers Chair in the Law of Banking and Finance at the University of Texas Law School. Hu's writings and public service relate to the law and finance of capital markets and corporate governance, with a special focus on financial innovation. The writings have appeared in law reviews (e.g., Columbia Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal), finance and specialist journals (e.g., Annual Review of Financial Economics, European Financial Management, and Risk), and newspapers (e.g., Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal). Six of his law review articles were named to the annual “Top Ten” list of corporate/securities law articles list (based on peer polls). A 1989 article showed how financial innovation would undermine the 1988 Basel Accord on bank capital adequacy, the pioneering international effort to address systemic risk. A 1993 article was the first work to show how cognitive biases, compensation structures, the nature of financial science, and other factors could cause major financial institutions to take excessive risks and make mistakes as to derivatives. In recognition of a 1995 article on risk management and a new conceptual framework for the corporate objective, an exchange-traded index derivative introduced in 1996 was assigned the ticker symbol of "HUI”. Today, the “HUI” (NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index) lives on as a major index for gold mining stocks. A series of sole- and lead-authored articles in 2006-2023 offered and refined the first systematic analysis of “decoupling,” a derivatives-related phenomenon affecting the foundational mechanisms of corporate and debt governance. These articles developed an analytical framework and coined terms (e.g., “empty creditor,” “empty voter,” and "morphable ownership") now used worldwide. The decoupling research was featured in a lead front-page story in the Wall Street Journal and stories in the Economist, the Financial Times, and the New York Times. Articles in 2012 and 2014 offered a rethinking of the classic approach to public disclosure relied on by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and show the approach’s inadequacies in conveying complex risks of certain financial innovations and certain TBTF banks. The articles offer a new conceptual framework for “information.” A co-authored 2018 article is the first academic work to show the need for, or to offer, a regulatory framework for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Hu received the Massey Prize for Research in Law, Innovation, and Capital Markets for his scholarly body of work, as recognized at an international symposium in 2014.

As for public service, Hu served as the founding Director of the SEC's Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (2009-2011) (initially called the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation). The first new Division in 37 years, the SEC’s “think tank” was created to provide sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis across the entire spectrum of SEC activities. See, e.g., Kara Scannell, At SEC, Scholar Who Saw It Coming, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 25, 2010, at page C1. He has been chair of the Business Associations Section of the Association of American Law Schools and a member of the Legal Advisory Board of the NASD (now FINRA), the NASD and NASDAQ Market Regulation Committees, and the Board of Trustees of the Center for American and International Law. He is on the Editorial Board of Oxford University Press’s Capital Markets Law Journal and a Life Member of The American Law Institute. In 2010, the National Association of Corporate Directors named him as one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance (the “Directorship 100”). Hu has given many talks worldwide at major universities and at a wide range of non-academic venues. He has testified before Congress as an academic and on behalf of the SEC. He has consulted for major U.S. and non-U.S. law firms and governmental authorities on seminal matters.  

Hu teaches corporate law, modern finance and governance, and securities regulation. He has also taught them at Harvard Law School, where he was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law for the 1997-98 academic year. He holds a B.S. (Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry), M.A. (Economics), and J.D., all from Yale. Sample Writings: Henry T. C. Hu, Swaps, the Modern Process of Financial Innovation and the Vulnerability of a Regulatory Paradigm, 138 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 333-435 (1989); Henry T. C. Hu, Misunderstood Derivatives: The Causes of Informational Failure and the Promise of Regulatory Incrementalism, 102 Yale Law Journal 1457-1513 (1993); Henry T. C. Hu, Hedging Expectations: "Derivative Reality" and the Law and Finance of the Corporate Objective, 73 Texas Law Review 985-1040 (1995); Faith and Magic: Investor Beliefs and Government Neutrality, 78 Texas Law Review 777-884 (2000); Henry T. C. Hu and Jay Lawrence Westbrook, Abolition of the Corporate Duty to Creditors, 107 Columbia Law Review 1321-1403 (2007); Henry T. C. Hu and Bernard Black, Equity and Debt Decoupling and Empty Voting II: Importance and Extensions, 156 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 625-739 (2008); Darrell Duffie and Henry T. C. Hu, Competing for a Share of Global Derivatives Markets: Trends and Policy Choices for the United States, draft at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1140869 (2008); Henry T. C. Hu and Bernard Black, Debt, Equity, and Hybrid Decoupling: Governance and Systemic Risk Implications, 14 European Financial Management 663-709 (2008); Henry T. C. Hu, 'Empty Creditors' and the Crisis--How Goldman's $7 billion was 'not material', Wall Street Journal, Apr. 10, 2009, at A13; Henry T. C. Hu and Terrance Odean, Paying for Old Age, New York Times, Feb. 26, 2011, at A19; Henry T. C. Hu, Too Complex to Depict? Innovation, "Pure Information," and the SEC Disclosure Paradigm, 90 Texas Law Review 1601-1715 (2012); Henry T. C. Hu, Efficient Markets and the Law: A Predictable Past and an Uncertain Future, 4 Annual Review of Financial Economics 179-214 (2012); Henry T. C. Hu, Systemic Risk and Financial Innovation: Towards a "Unified" Approach, in Quantifying Systemic Risk (Joseph G. Haubrich & Andrew W. Lo eds.; University of Chicago Press, 2013); Henry T. C. Hu, Disclosure Universes and Modes of Information: Banks, Innovation, and Divergent Regulatory Quests, 31 Yale Journal on Regulation 565-666 (2014); Henry T. C. Hu, Financial Innovation and Governance Mechanisms: The Evolution of Decoupling and Transparency, 70 Business Lawyer 347-405 (2015); Henry T. C. Hu and John D. Morley, A Regulatory Framework for Exchange-Traded Funds, 91 Southern California Law Review 839-941 (2018); Henry T. C. Hu, The $5tn ETF market that balances precariously on outdated rules, Financial Times, April 24, 2018, at 9; Henry T. C. Hu and John D. Morley, The SEC and Regulation of Exchange-Traded Funds: A Commendable Start and a Welcome Invitation, 92 Southern California Law Review 1155-1202 (2019); Henry Hu, Reform the credit default swap market to rein in abuses, Financial Times, Feb. 25, 2019, at 13; Henry T. C. Hu, The Disclosure Paradigm: Conventional Understandings and Modern Divergences in Prospectus Regulation and Prospectus Liability (Danny Busch, Guido Ferrarini, and Jan Paul Franx eds.; Oxford University Press, 2020); Henry T. C. Hu, Governance and the Decoupling of Debt and Equity: The SEC Moves, 17 Capital Markets Law Journal 411-467 (2022); Henry T. C. Hu and Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Decoupling and Motivation: Re-Calibrating Standards of Fiduciary Review, Rethinking "Disinterested" Shareholder Decisions, and Deconstructing "De-SPACs," 78 Business Lawyer 999-1046 (2023); Henry T. C. Hu and Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Reconceptualizing Shareholder "Disinterestedness": Transformative Institutional Investor Changes and Motivational Misalignments in Voting, 80 Business Lawyer -- (2025) (forthcoming) (draft of November 7, 2024), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=4803339.

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