'The 28th Regime: An Effective Legal Architecture for Innovation in Europe?' – ECGI-Bocconi-LawFin Workshop Series on 'The Law and Finance of Private Equity and Venture Capital'

The Bocconi University Department of Legal Studies and the DFG LawFin Center at Goethe University in Frankfurt, together with ECGI, are pleased to announce the 7th LawFin Workshop—the third in the series jointly organised with the Department of Legal Studies at Bocconi University and under the sponsorship of ECGI. 

The workshop will take place fully online (Zoom) on 7 May (13:00–18:30 CET) and will focus on:

'The 28th Regime: An Effective Legal Architecture for Innovation in Europe?'

Building on the discussion of VC contracting under European legal regimes in our first workshop, and on the exploration of VC contracting beyond Europe in our second workshop, this event focuses on whether the 28th regime can be an effective tool to foster innovation in Europe. The goal is to move beyond generic claims about simplification, innovation, and competitiveness and to offer a more granular account of the regime's potential and limitations resulting from the proposal. The discussion will focus on the broader architecture of the regime, its relationship with national corporate laws (broadly conceived), the political dimension of the initiative, and its implications for Europe’s approach to company law. At the same time, it will pay special attention to what the initiative may mean for innovation policy, particularly as regards the extent to which the emerging regime aims to (and is capable of) accommodating the special needs of innovation-driving VC-backed firms. 

The programme combines academic analysis with a practitioner- and policymaker-facing discussion on cross-border structuring techniques and their implications. Three research papers will be presented and discussed, followed by a roundtable with representatives from academia, the VC and entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the legal profession.

The first Bocconi-LawFin-ECGI VC contracting workshop was held on 4 December 2025. The second one was held on 18 March 2026. Subsequent events will focus, inter alia, on 'Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds across the Globe' and 'Legal Culture and Private Ordering: What Can VC Contracting Teach Us?' The series aims to explore PE and VC intermediaries’ structure and operations through an interdisciplinary lens and to trace how VC contracting practices travel across jurisdictions, thus deepening our understanding of how formal law and informal norms jointly shape a foundational pillar of modern innovation finance.

Registration is required here.

Further information is available here and here.

For queries, please contact research@lawfin.uni-frankfurt.de.