The relationship between corporate governance and financial stability is an intermediate one. Firms have no obligation to take financial stability into account except when the law or the applicable regulation imposes it. In several fields this is the case: regulation of auditors or credit rating...

This article is the Belgian report concerning rating agencies to the 2006 Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law to be held in Utrecht. After describing credit rating practices in Belgium, the report considers the extent to which Belgian regulation requires, or relies upon,...

As a result of the extensive failures of financial institutions that have occurred since 1995 in Japan, legal action against previous bank directors is expected to increase in the future. The question is, what should be the duty of care for a bank director, and in particular, what should be the...

Conflicts of interests are at the heart of numerous problems in business and finance. The law has not ignored them. The obligation to avoid or manage them finds its roots in the duty of loyalty. This duty is common to both the Anglo-American and Continental European legal traditions. Although...

Recently, an enactment designed to create a legal system for banking agencies in Japan to improve depositors' benefits based on the required structural changes of Japanese financial and capital markets was approved and promulgated. The author compares the U.S. and Japanese banking law systems,...

This article evaluates whether the Tokyo international capital market can play a major role in the realm of international finance and what it must do to get there. The historical development and relevant laws and regulations governing the operation of this market are discussed. In addition, this...

Since the Japanese accounting method is a unique one of its own, Japanese companies trying to finance overseas are expected to be requested to disclose their performances based on the foreign countries' standards, or to disclose the tables for adjusting differences with these standards. It will...

Although ten years had passed since the bubble economy burst, and [yen] 7.2 trillion in public funds were poured into most of the Japanese banks in 1999 in order to beef up their net worth capital, the profit figures of 131 major banks in 2003 did not show signs of the financial market's...

Not long ago, financial markets in most poor and middle-income countries were shallow to nonexistent, and closed to foreigners. Governments often had to rely on risky borrowing abroad; the private sector had even fewer options. But between 1995 and 2005, domestic debt in the emerging markets grew...