Interview with Associate Professor Cally Jordan

Associate Professor Cally Jordan brings two decades of professional and academic experience in Asia to Melbourne Law School and the ALC.

An expert in corporate governance, capital markets, and corporate law, Professor Jordan has been directly involved in Asia since 1995, when she was invited to Hong Kong to work on reform of Hong Kong's companies law. She was a resident of Hong Kong for three and a half years, eventually submitting her report in May 1997, just prior to Hong Kong's handover.  
Subsequently, she spent fifteen years at the World Bank, where she worked as both consultant and advisor. At the World Bank, she continued to be involved with China, as well as other Asian countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam. In that role, she enjoyed considerable access to Asian policy makers, academics and other officials. Folders containing the research materials acquired in those years continue to line her office walls.  

One of the great advantages Associate Professor Jordan brings to her work on Asia is her familiarity with European civil law systems. Associate Professor Jordan has degrees in both civil and common law. She notes that a great many Asian jurisdictions have based their legal systems, and especially their corporate laws, on the German civil law model first adopted by Japan.

Last year, Associate Professor Jordan published International Capital Markets: Law and Institutions with Oxford University Press UK. That work surveys a range of capital markets, including markets in Asia: China and Hong Kong, as well as 'niche markets' such as Malaysia and Singapore. Associate Professor Jordan expects that it will be a resource useful to academics, practitioners and policy makers in Asia.

Associate Professor Jordan enjoys her work in Asia, the barriers presented by language notwithstanding. She says that working, researching and living in Asia generates a deeper cultural understanding. Since the law, she says, is a 'cultural artefact', having that cultural understanding is key to giving sensitive and targeted, rather than 'top down', legal and policy advice.