Mr Casimiro Antonio Nigro

Casimiro A. Nigro is an Assistant Professor (*) at the CAS on the Foundations of Law and Finance at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt since 2019.

His research interests are primarily centred around comparative corporate governance and law, as well as comparative securities laws and regulation, with occasional forays into financial regulation-related topics.

Leveraging also his prior professional experience as a lawyer involved in top national and international law firms, he has developed a strong passion and expertise in private equity, particularly in Venture Capital (“VC”) law. Presently, he is engaged in a comprehensive project that explores the intersection of corporate law and venture capital investments. His research output predominantly reflects his focus on these areas.

Notable publications include: “Venture Capital-backed Firms, Value-destroying Trade Sales, and Fair Value Protections” (2021) 22 EUROPEAN BUSINESS ORGANIZATION LAW REVIEW 39 (with Jorg R Stahl); and “Building an EU Venture Capital Market: What about Corporate Law?”, in: Gabriella Gimigliano and Valentino Cattelan (Eds), MONEY, LAW, CAPITAL, AND THE CHANGING IDENTITY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2022, 165 (with Alperen A. Gözlügöl).

His upcoming works, co-authored with Luca Enriques and Tobias H. Tröger – titled “Venture Capital Contracting in Continental Europe: Bargaining in the Shadow of Corporate Law Constraints” and “VC Contracting in Germany and Italy: Mapping Corporate Law-based Regulatory Constraints”, aim to present a comprehensive theory of the corporate law-venture capital nexus and provide the first comprehensive map of the regulatory constraints that German and Italian corporate laws impose on contracting parties attempting to adopt the best real-world private ordering solutions to address the problems affecting the venture capitalist-entrepreneur relationship.

His working paper on “Conflicting Fiduciary Duties and Fire Sales of VC-backed Start-ups (with Bo Bian and Yingxiang Li) has been awarded “best paper prizes” at world-class international conferences and workshops, including the 2023 John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award at the “2023 Annual Corporate Governance Symposium” organized by The John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance and the Department of Finance at the Lerner College of Business & Economics at the University of Delaware in collaboration with the European Corporate Governance Institute.

In addition to his research endeavors, Casimiro Nigro teaches courses at Goethe-Universität, including “The Law & Economics of Private Equity and Venture Capital Contracting”, “Startup Financing and Governance”, and “Comparative Corporate Governance and Law”. He also instructs a course on comparative corporate law at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. (*) He holds a post-doc position that is internationally equivalent to "Assistant Professor."