Min Yan

Min is currently undertaking a PhD at King’s College London. He previously studied for his LLB at Jilin University and LLM at University of Durham with distinction. From 2010, Min practices law as a qualified lawyer in China and becomes legal consultant for several large companies such as Kunshan Aluminium Co. Ltd. Min joins King’s in October 2011 for his doctorate under the supervision of Dr. Michael Schillig and Dr. Tunde Ogowewo. Min has been awarded the King’s International Graduate Scholarship to complete his research. Besides, he is the president of Chinese Student and Scholar Association at King’s and also serves as the editor of King’s Student Law Review (also called King’s College London Review of Legal Studies).

Min’s doctoral research focuses on the corporate objective in order to examine for whose interests the company should serve and endeavours to find a most appropriate corporate objective based on economic, ethic and socio-legal analysis. The outcome of his research could be applied as the starting point for future corporate governance discussion by providing a right direction for assessing and evaluating corporate performance and managerial accountability. In particular, because there is currently no in-depth discussion on the corporate objective of Chinese companies thus far, it is of great significance to do an initial research on the objective of Corporate China as well as its cause of formation, impact and future. Although it is known apart from shareholders, other non-shareholding stakeholders’ investment such as the credits provided by creditors, the labour and know-how provided by employees, the services and products provided by suppliers and the infrastructure provided by the government among others are indispensable; stakeholder protection as a concept is unfamiliar to most Chinese scholars. It is thereby of vital importance to conduct a thorough research under Chinese context and then introduce this concept into China.

He wishes to justify the stakeholder model among others, and also discuss the role and function of the shareholder in the current corporate governance structure as well as its protection both in UK and China. In addition, Min is also interested in studying the relationship between ownership structure and corporate governance in China by comparative law studies.