Horst Eidenmüller

Professor of Commercial Law

Biography

Horst Eidenmüller joined the Faculty of Law as a Visiting Professor in 2009 and took up a Chair in Commercial Law and a Professorial Fellowship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 2015.

Eidenmüller was born in Munich, Germany. He obtained an LLM from the University of Cambridge (1989) and a PhD from the University of Munich (1994). He also worked for McKinsey & Co. in the 1990s. After completing his Habilitation in 1998, he was a Professor of Law at the University of Münster from 1999 to 2003. From 2003 to 2014, he held the Chair of Private Law, German, European and International Company Law at the University of Munich. From 2007 to 2011, this position was designated as a research professorship under the excellence scheme of the German Research Foundation. Eidenmüller took up his current position on 1 January 2015.

Eidenmüller’s main research areas are contract law, company and bankruptcy law, and alternative dispute resolution. He is known for his economic and empirical analysis of fundamental problems in these fields. He has also pioneered research into the impact of artificial intelligence on commercial and corporate law and commercial dispute resolution. Eidenmüller has held visiting positions at leading universities, including Cambridge (2007), Harvard (2011), Stanford (2014, 2026), Chicago (2019, 2024–2025), and Columbia (2018, 2023). From 2008 to 2009, he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Eidenmüller has been a Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute since 2009 and a Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2008. Since 1995, he has acted as an arbitrator in more than 40 commercial disputes (DIS, ICC, UNCITRAL and ad hoc proceedings) and as a mediator in more than 60 commercial disputes.

As a student, Eidenmüller was a competitive long-distance runner. He is a passionate ski mountaineer, climber, and cyclist.

Publications