Born 1961 in Bonn. Law and economics studies at the University of Bonn, conferral of doctorate Bonn (1985), German Habilitation in civil law, commercial, corporate and tax law Bonn(1992), Professorship University of Bielefeld (1992-1996), Director of the Institute for Tax Law and of the Centre of European Commercial Law Bonn (1996-2002), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Munich (since 2002), Honorary Professor for Civil, Commercial, Corporate and Tax Law, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (since 2002), Vice-President of the Max Planck Society (2008 to 2014), Vice President of the German Research Foundation (since 2014).