CV

Franca Contratto, born and raised in Schwyz (Switzerland), studied law at the Universities of Fribourg (Switzerland) and Exeter (UK). She was admitted to the bar in 1999 and subsequently worked as a legal practitioner until 2007: she managed court cases at a corporate law firm in Zurich, supervised capital market transactions and listing procedures for innovative financial products on the SIX Swiss Exchange and worked as a consultant in the field of public policy in UBS AG’s Corporate Center.

In 2006, Franca Contratto graduated from the University of Fribourg with a thesis on conceptual approaches to the regulation of derivatives (Joseph Vigener Prize, Professor Walther Hug Award). Grants awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Professor Heinrich Kronstein Foundation subsequently enabled her to do research at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and to obtain the title “Master of Law”. This was followed by positions as a senior teaching and research assistant at the Universities of Bern and Fribourg, and as an independent PostDoc-researcher with an SNSF Ambizione grant at the University of Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for International and Foreign Private Law in Hamburg.

In 2013, Franca Contratto was appointed as assistant professor of financial market law at the University of Zurich; as a member of the interdisciplinary University Research Priority Program (URPP) Financial Market Regulation, she researched topics including the risks and opportunities of new technologies in financial markets and authored a postdoctoral “Habilitation” thesis entitled “Pluralism in capital market enforcement – empirical findings and dogmatic approaches to the interplay between private and public enforcement” (“Pluralistische Rechtsverwirklichung im Kapitalmarkt – Empirie und Dogmatik der Rechtsdurchsetzung im Wechselspiel zwischen Staat und Privaten”). On 19 February 2020, the University of Zurich appointed Franca Contratto as a private lecturer and issued her the venia legendi for the fields of private, commercial and business law.

Franca Contratto was appointed to the Faculty of Law at the University of Lucerne on 1 February 2019 and promoted to full professor in 2022. She is a Co-Director of the interdisciplinary Institute for Business and Regulation (WiRe) and a Co-Head of the Faculty’s ‘primius’ scholarship programme. Her teaching at the University of Lucerne includes contracts (“Swiss Code of Obligations”), company law and financial market law. At the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano she held a guest professor position for Financial Regulation & Compliance and for Law & Practice of Capital Markets from 2019– 2023.

As of 1 January 2024, the Swiss Federal Council appointed Franca Contratto as Vice-President of the Swiss Federal Audit Oversight Authority (FAOA). Franca Contratto is furthermore a member of the Swiss Takeover Board (TOB) since 2015.

Franca Contratto also acts as an expert for authorities and for lawmaking projects - for example in 2012/13 with a view to the drafting of the Swiss Financial Services Act (FinSA). In 2024, she was invited to join the circle of European Company Law Experts, an independent group of experts with representatives from various EU member states (Benelux, Germany, England, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden) and Switzerland, which deals with current regulatory developments in the area of European company and financial market law.

Research

Professor Franca Contratto’s main areas of research include:

• Financial market supervision, enforcement and sanctions
• Digitalisation and new technologies in the field of financial market regulation
• Financial services law between civil and supervisory law
• Stock corporation, capital market and takeover law
• Responsibility, liability, damage liquidation and alternative dispute resolution
• Financial market regulation and policy in a European and global context
• Regulation theory and law and economics
• Business management, corporate governance and compliance
• Business ethics

Publications

Achievements