Elisabeth de Fontenay

Elisabeth de Fontenay’s primary research interests are in the fields of corporate law and corporate finance. She joined the Duke Law faculty in 2013 after serving as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. At Duke Law, she teaches Business Associations, Corporate Finance, and Private Equity & Hedge Funds, and received the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014.

Her broad research agenda focuses on how market actors behave in the less-regulated spaces of the financial markets. Her work (available here) has examined questions such as the ongoing decline in U.S. public companies and the rise of private capital, private equity firms’ role in the debt markets and in corporate governance, public versus private financial markets, complexity in financial contracting, and value creation by transactional lawyers and elite law firms. She has testified before Congress and presented to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on current topics in corporate finance.

De Fontenay received her B.A., summa cum laude, in economics from Princeton University, where she was a two-time All-American rugby player. She received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, de Fontenay practiced as a corporate associate at Ropes & Gray, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, debt financing, and private investment funds.

RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS

• Corporate Finance, Corporate Law, Private Investment Funds, Financial Contracting, Leveraged Financing, Mergers & Acquisitions

EDUCATION

• HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, J.D., magna cum laude, 2005
  Journal on Legislation, Editor
  HLS TaxHelp, Volunteer
  
• PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, B.A., Economics, summa cum laude, 2000
  Phi Beta Kappa
  Human Values Forum, Junior Fellow
  Women’s Rugby Team, All-American, 1999 and 2000