Financial Derivatives have established themselves as a major driving force in the international monetary sphere in the recent past. While derivatives were originally used as an effective monetary instrument to multiply the wealth through ripple effect, of late these instruments are also used by...

When Congress passed the National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996 (NSMIA), it unilaterally withdrew the preexisting power of the states to require pre-sale registration disclosures by issuers, including the power to conduct pre-sale disclosure review, merit review, or any other kind...

Congress, urged by the states to fill the “gap” left by their existing regulatory schemes for local securities markets, passed the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Since the enactment of federal legislation, investors in securities have been protected by a dual...

State regulators utilize merit review to protect investors, issuers, and the marketplace by focusing on the substantive quality of securities offerings. In this article, the author addresses the evolution of the dual regulatory system and the resulting roles of the state and federal securities...

At a time of such great turbulence, looking to the future directions of capital markets and their regulation in developed economies is a particularly risky business. We are in the midst of a great sea change.Nevertheless, there are several current, and readily observable, phenomena which are...

Foundational financial legislation is typically adopted in the midst or aftermath of financial crises, when an informed understanding of the causes of the crisis is not yet available. Moreover, financial institutions operate in a dynamic environment of considerable uncertainty, such that...

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...

The article focuses on regulation of takeovers in the European Union (EU) and in the United Kingdom (UK) with the aim to discuss and assess the relative importance of primary purpose of the regulation, i.e. facilitation of takeovers and change of control, and means of achievement of the...

The EU recently established new supranational financial supervision authorities — ESAs — capable of adopting binding supervisory decisions. The upgraded regulatory framework also inaugurated judicial review by a newly established Board of Appeal and the Court of Justice against these...

Corporate governance scandals inevitably raise concerns about the extent to which corporate directors failed in their responsibility to monitor the corporation and its managers, especially in terms of the latter's' misdeeds. Corporate governance reforms strive to shore up directors' roles by...