This paper explores the legal risks involved in depositing cryptocurrency with crypto-custodians such as crypto-exchanges. These risks materialize most acutely in case these crypto-custodians fall insolvent, which has happened over the last decade in several instances. Recent years have...

Conventional economic analysis assumes that Central Counterparties (CCPs) may help to reduce systemic risk and avoid future financial crises by mandating the central clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. This view largely goes unchallenged by governments, regulators, practitioners, and...

This Article observes that there is not a clear consensus among courts in how to describe the scope and nature of a breach of the peace when a lender elects self-help repossession and things go awry. That does not mean that courts have not deduced some guideposts that parties can use in deciding...

The U.S. residential housing market collapse illustrates the consequences of ignoring risk while funding mortgage borrowing. Collateral over-valuation was a foundational piece of the crisis. Over the past few decades, secondary markets, securitization, policy and psychology increased the flow of...

Financial collateral is a concept that starts from the idea of traditional security interests and is then developed considerably further. Security interests are restricted in their scope of application and typically impose a number of requirements and limitations on the creditor (security taker)...

When things go wrong, it is always good to find someone to blame. As the credit crisis started to unfold in 2007, credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) emerged as the villain – or scapegoat, one might say – for commentators and regulators alike. To sum up, observers accused CRAs of doing a...

Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30%, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They...

The English law of mortgage is remarkable. Its complexity rivals that of Euler's equation and could, in the same manner, be described as ‘beautiful'. Its stubborn retention of archaic terms and concepts operates in sharp contrast to the ever changing world of finance which it inhabits. Most...

Several top deals already closed, a still highly fragmented industry and strong pressure for further consolidation following the financial crisis - renewable energy certainly has become a red-hot topic in M&A. Surveying 220 companies in the solar photovoltaic, utility and financial sector as...