This paper explores the possibility of remedial intervention against the credit rating oligopoly under the competition rules. It is divided in six parts. Following an introduction, Part II provides an overview of the credit rating industry. Part III demonstrates that there is a possible economic...

This article reviews the use in the flotation of Standard Life plc of the prospectus passport for cross-border offers of securities within the EU that was introduced by the Prospectus Directive (2003). The Standard Life flotation was a major test for the new law on prospectuses and, overall, it...

Are the grand theories of integration still relevant today and capable of describing integration in the European Union? Have the general principles of the grand theories lost their ability to accurately describe European integration? For policy makers and scholars that rely on theories, the...

This article studies the regulatory strategies to address the potential systemic risk of hedge funds operation in financial markets. Due to the implications of the choice of regulatory strategies and instruments in terms of mitigating systemic risk, the article focuses on one critical aspect of...

We analyze the behavior of an array of financial assets around European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy decisions. We document that European and U.S. equities accumulate sizeable excess returns in the week ahead of an announcement. Pre-ECB announcement returns are stronger from the...

What is the current state of sovereign credit risk across Euro zone? Does the recent fiscal crisis extend to other (non Euro zone) countries? Is Greece the center of the problem? How did the current fiscal crisis in the Euro area start? Who is behind it? Why can it evolve? How can it be...

Con la crisi del debito dell'Eurozona il rischio sovrano sulle obbligazioni governative dei paesi area Euro e' radicalmente mutato. I fondi obbligazionari governativi area Euro investono proprio in questi strumenti finanziari e costituiscono una quota significativa del risparmio delle famiglie...

This essay, based on the author's presentation last September to the annual meeting of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA), addresses several issues related to Rule 506, the most widely-used of the SEC's transactional exemptions from federal registration of...

The year 2009 is a propitious time to evaluate systems of investor protection in financial markets as global bank losses exceed the 1 trillion mark and market losses equally exceed the 1 trillion mark. Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, the European Union enacted sweeping legislation to...

The Global Financial Crisis has shown that the international financial system is vulnerable to breakdown. The financial trilemma demonstrates that financial stability, international banking and national financial supervision cannot be combined. National supervisors force international banks to...