European Banking Union (EBU) is an odd construction born of compromises and shaped to fit into legal territory bounded by EU Treaty constraints that cannot be adjusted in the current political environment. Can EBU work in spite of the limitations of its design or is there dangerous papering over...

European Banking Union (EBU) provides an important new context in which to examine how differentiation affects integration. This chapter considers: (1) the short to medium term appeal of EBU participation for Member States that do not use the euro (centripetal effects); and (ii) the potential...

Twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain - which for decades had separated East from West - most countries of Central and Eastern Europe are now members of the European Union; some have even adopted the euro. Nonetheless, these countries have also remained exceptionally vulnerable to...

Inadequate regulation of the financial system is widely thought to have contributed to the financial crisis. The purpose of the book is to articulate a framework within which financial regulation can be analysed in a coherent and comprehensive fashion. The book's approach is distinctive in...

Under the Basel capital rules for internationally active banks, subordinated debt has always been permitted to contribute a part of the bank's regulatory capital requirements. This is a surprising concession to banks, at first sight, since debt, as a liability, cannot contribute to equity (ie...

According to a common narrative, in addition to inadequate capital and liquidity, the failure of banks in the financial crisis also reflected their poor governance. By governance we mean broadly the oversight that comes from banks' own shareholders and other stakeholders of the way in which they...