Professor Eilis Ferran

Professor Eilís Ferran, FBA PhD is Professor of Company & Securities Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. She is also the Provost of the Gates-Cambridge Trust, which provides scholarships for postgraduate study at Cambridge funded by a major donation from the Gates Foundation.  

Between 2015 and 2021 she was the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations. As Pro-Vice-Chancellor she had strategic responsibility for Cambridge University’s staff policies and significant international academic partnerships. She led the modernisation of career paths, co-ordinated the University’s response to covid as an employer, and was instrumental in the development of the University’s Strategic Partnerships Office. Between 2012 and 2015 she served as Chair of the University’s Law Faculty.

In her research, Eilís has written extensively on UK, EU and international financial regulation, company law and corporate finance law.  Her publications include Brexit and Financial Services (Hart Publishing, 2017 co-authored), The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation (OUP, 2015, co-edited) and The Regulatory Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (CUP 2012, co-authored). Eilis founded the University of Cambridge LLM Corporate Finance law paper and has taught on it over many years.  With co-authors Elizabeth Howell (London School of Economics) and Felix Steffek (Cambridge), she has recently completed a new edition of the textbook Principles of Corporate Finance Law (OUP, 2023). Eilis has advised UK Parliamentary committees and served as an academic member of the Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority.

Eilís is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple. She is an independent non-executive director of Euroclear Holding SA/NV and Euroclear SA/NV, and is the Chair of the Group Nomination and Governance Committee.  She is also a non-executive director of the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge.