James Fanto

Biography

Professor Fanto teaches courses on banking, broker-dealer law and regulation, compliance, corporate and securities law, corporate finance, and comparative and international corporate law and governance. His extensive writings and lectures both in the United States and abroad focus on the law relating to banks, broker-dealers, corporate boards, comparative corporate governance, cross-cultural securities disclosure and merger decision making.

He is the author of several books, including the preeminent hornbooks, Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation (Wolters Kluwer 5th ed. annually updated) (with J. Gross) and Directors’ and Officers’ Liability (PLI 2d ed.), and his articles have appeared in many law reviews. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Practical Compliance & Risk Management for the Securities Industry (Walters Kluwer), an editor of an electronic journal in the Social Science Research Network, an occasional faculty member at the FINRA Institute at Georgetown, and he serves as an independent consultant and expert on corporate and securities law matters.  He is also an associate reporter on The American Law Institute’s project entitled Principles of the Law:  Compliance, Risk Management, and Enforcement.

He is the co-director of the Center for the Study of Business Law and Regulation.

Before entering academia, Professor Fanto practiced banking, corporate, and securities law with the firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in Washington, D.C., New York, and Paris, France. He was a law clerk to Judge Louis H. Pollak of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court.