Virtual currencies pose a serious threat to be used for money laundering, weakening the European Union's financial system. Directive (EU) 2018/843 (the fifth anti-money laundering Directive) intends to mitigate these risks by introducing a definition of virtual currencies within Union law. Some...

In the last two decades prolonged instances of corporate wrongdoing in Europe have been un-covered: from Siemens’ systemic bribery to HSBC and other major bank’s money laundering issues, Dieselgate, LIBOR price-rigging, and the recent Wirecard debacle. What has driven European firms to...

Money laundering has become a phenomenon of financial market regulation. The obligation to identify the ultimate beneficiary, or the beneficiary owner, which need not be entirely synonymous terms, has been the focus for both national authorities and international organizations. However, such...

The Judgment of the European Court of Justice (Grand Chamber) of 22 November 2022, ECLI:EU:C:2022:912 in the Joined Cases C-37/20 and C-601/20, WM and Sovim SA v. Luxembourg Business Registers has spurred some strong reactions. According to some, it “will leave fraudsters rubbing their hands...

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...

The world’s fragmented, sovereign securities markets have been dramatically transcended by the forces of internationalization. Worldwide deregulation has collapsed many of the regulatory barriers to an integrated global marketplace. The most dynamic regulatory evolution has occurred in the...

This chapter introduces financial market infrastructures (FMIs), the backbone and the critical providers of essential services to modern financial markets. FMIs have been a central piece to the post-2008 global financial crisis reforms. Yet, despite the critical functions they provide in the...

On January 10, 2017, less than nine months after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted by the European Union, the European Commission issued its proposal for a new ePrivacy Regulation. In analyzing this new proposal, this article first places European Union ePrivacy...

Financial market infrastructures (“FMIs”), which facilitate the execution of financial transactions, exhibit such strong economies of scale that they are natural monopolies. In each market, production is controlled by a few dominant players. Federal courts have traditionally checked the...

As businesses and other entities have sought to collect more personal data on individuals, the public has pushed back, and lawmakers throughout the United States and elsewhere have responded by passing data protection laws. Recent data protection laws passed by the European Union and by several...