Christina Sautter

Headshot of Christina Sautter, faculty member at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵDedman School of Law.

Professor of Law

Full-time faculty

Email

christinasautter@smu.edu

Christina Sautter’s research interests lie in corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, and technology-powered investing. Her most current research explores the relationship between markets and corporations. It focuses on new generations of investors’ power to transform corporate governance, analyzing the role of technology and online communications as well as of generational features and affinities. Professor Sautter also has extensively written on M&A. Her M&A scholarship focuses on the sale process of publicly traded companies and the intersection of fiduciary duties and deal terms. She co-authored “Mergers and Acquisitions Law,” a hornbook published by West Academic Publishing. She also is the author of chapters in the “Research Handbook on Mergers & Acquisitions,” “Feminist Judgments: Corporate Law Rewritten,” and “A Research Agenda for Corporate Law."

She has authored articles appearing in Boston University Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Washington & Lee Law Review, The Journal of Corporation Law, and other leading journals. Her scholarship has been featured in and she has been quoted by newspapers, magazines, and blogs, including The Wall Street Journal; The Financial Times; USA Today; Yahoo!Finance; FoxBusiness; Bloomberg; Bloomberg Tax; Forbes; the University of Oxford, Oxford Business Law Blog (OBLB); The CLS Blue Sky Blog (Columbia Law School's Blog on Corporations and Capital Markets); The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance; the Business Law Prof Blog; TheCorporateCounsel.net Blog; and the CorpGov.net Corporate Governance Blog.

Prior to joining the ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵfaculty, Professor Sautter was a member of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center faculty from 2008 to 2023 where she held the Cynthia Felder Fayard Professorship, the Byron R. Kantrow Professorship, and the Vinson & Elkins Professorship. Professor Sautter practiced in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group in the New York City offices of Shearman & Sterling LLP, where she represented companies from a variety of industries in multi-million- and billion-dollar multinational M&A deals on both the sell side and buy side. She also provided on-going corporate governance advice to boards of directors. She clerked for the late Honorable H. Emory Widener, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She also served as a Westerfield Fellow at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Professor Sautter earned her J.D. from Villanova University School of Law, graduating summa cum laude. While in law school, Professor Sautter was a managing editor of the Villanova Law Review and was selected as a member of The Order of the Coif. She received her bachelor’s degree in both Multinational Business Operations and Marketing from Florida State University, graduating summa cum laude.

Area of expertise

  • Corporate Governance
  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Transactional Law

Education

B.S., summa cum laude, Florida State University
J.D., summa cum laude, Villanova University School of Law

Books

(West Academic Publishing 2018) (with Franklin A. Gevurtz)

Articles

Corporate Governance Through Social Media, 75 Florida Law Review Forum 89 (2024)
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Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, 100 Washington University Law Review 1653 (2023) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)
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The Corporate Forum, 102 Boston University Law Review 1861 (2022) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

The Educated Retail Investor: A Response to “Regulating Democratized Investing, 83 Ohio State Law Journal Online 205 (2022) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

The Wireless Investors Movement, University of Chicago Business Law Review: Online Edition (2022) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

Corporate Governance Gaming: The Collective Power of Retail Investors, 22 Nevada Law Journal 51 (2021) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

Transaction Cost Economics & MAEs: The Dealmaker’s Crystal Ball, 89 Fordham L.aw Review Online 41 (2021)

Delaware as Deal Arbiter, 77 Washington & Lee Law Review 1269 (2020)

The Golden Ratio of Corporate Deal-Making, 41 Journal of Corporation Law 817 (2016)

Fleecing the Family Jewels, 90 Tulane Law Review 545 (2016)

Auction Theory & Standstill Agreements: Dealing with Friends and Foes in a Sale of Corporate Control, 64 Case Western Reserve Law Review 521 (2013)

Lock-Up Creep, 38 Journal of Corporation Law 681 (2013) (with Steven M. Davidoff)

Promises Made to be Broken? Standstill Agreements in Change of Control Transactions, 37 Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 929 (2013)

Rethinking Contractual Limits on Fiduciary Duties, 38 Florida State University Law Review 55 (2010)

Shopping During Extended Store Hours: From No Shops to Go-Shops – the Development, Effectiveness, and Implications of Go-Shop Provisions in Change of Control Transactions, 73 Brooklyn Law Review 525 (2008)

Book chapters

Harnessing the Collective Power of Retail Investors, in (Christopher M. Bruner & Marc Moore, eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

Rewritten Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., in (Anne Choike, Usha R. Rodrigues, & Kelli Alces Williams, eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2023)

Tender Offers and Disclosure: The History and Future of the Williams Act, in (Claire Hill & Steven Davidoff Solomon, eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2016)

Other publications

Matter of Class: The Impact of Brown v. McLean on Employee Discharge Cases, 46 Villanova University Law Review 421 (2001)

Media

Bloomberg, quoted in (June 2024)

The Atlantic
, quoted in (June 2024)

Fortune
, quoted in (June 2024)

Bloomberg, quoted in (June 2024)

Forbes, quoted in  (June 2024)

Axios, quoted in  (May 2024)

NPR Marketplace Podcast, Interview, (April 2024)

Yahoo Finance, quoted in  (February 2024)

Financial Times, quoted in  (January 2024)

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵPerspectives, Interview,  (January 2024)

IR Magazine The Ticker Podcast, Interview,  (December 2023)

Fox Business, Op-Ed,  (September 2023) (with Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci)

Unusual Whales Podcast, Interview, (September 2023)

The Daily Beast, quoted in (April 2023)

Stakeholder Labs, Interview,  (April 2023)

Bloomberg Law, quoted in (October 2022)

USA Today, quoted in (July 2022)

VoiceAmerica, Interview,  (March 2022)

Forbes, featured in (March 2022)

Bloomberg Tax, quoted in (November 2021)

Forbes, featured in (October 2021)