Commercial Law - Overview

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Commercial law as a subject gives you a view of the legal structure that regulates economic decision making within the business world. It is about presenting the Finnish and international rules of the game. Successful entrepreneurship requires knowledge of the rules and standards controlling the industry.

The personnel of the Department works both in Helsinki and Vaasa. The personnel consists today of seven teachers, Matti Kukkonen (professor and head of Department, interest areas tax law and company law), Petri Mäntysaari (professor and Vice Head of Department, located in Vaasa, interest areas law of company finance, company law, corporate governance), Niklas Bruun (professor, intellectual property law), Joachim Enkvist (Post-doctoral researcher), Marcus Norrgård (professor, intellectual property law), Anders von Koskull (lecturer, labour law) and Mayvor Höglund (hourly indtructor, located in Vaasa, commercial law). Courses are given within the framework of the Bachelor´s and Master´s degree curriculum at the school. Research and teaching at the Department is focused upon such law as is relevant to business. It is mainly directed to the following areas:

• contract law and credit- and insolvency law,
• company law, law of corporate finance and corporate governance
• tax law with special regard to the taxation of enterprises
• intellectual property law and market law
• labour law

Legal methodology in use is partly traditional, but much influenced by European law, international instruments like tax treaties and trade agreements. Comparative law methods are also used and studies of foreign law forms an important part of current research. Hereby, a special part of the research is directed towards the interaction between law and economic theory within the reserach domains.

Teaching programme is accomplished mainly through joint courses in Helsinki and Vasa. The majority of the courses are in Swedish, completed by a number of courses in English. The department encourages especially those interested in international commercial law to take the opportunity to go abroad as an exchange student and to participate in the highly qualitative language courses at Hanken. At the department we make an effort to smoothen the combination of exchange studies with the studies at Hanken.

Due to an agreement on collaboration in the legal science between the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki, the department of Commercial Law at Hanken and the autonomous Swedish School of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki allows for participation in the lecturing at the other universities respectively. You will find further information on this on the website of the department.

The Centre of International Economic Law, CIEL, is an institution established by the Department to promote and conduct research within the field of International Economic Law. CIEL focuses mainly on the law of the European Union and the study of the new legal and institutional environment for business.

Additional information:

Professor Matti Kukkonen, Helsinki
Head of Department
Tel: +358-(0)9 431 33 339
Email: matti.kukkonen[a]hanken.fi

Professor Niklas Bruun, Helsinki
Tel: +358-(0)9 191 22 776
Email: niklas.bruun[a]hanken.fi

Professor Petri Mäntysaari, Vaasa
Tel: +358-(0)6 35 33 735
Email: petri.mantysaari[a]hanken.fi