Speculation is rife on the origins of the worldwide financial crisis of 2008, with a preponderance focusing on alleged shortcomings in corporate governance. This book offers a distinct yet complementary perspective: that the most useful path to follow, if we want to understand what happened and forestall its happening again, is through an analysis of contract relationships - specifically, banking contracts entered into in the financial services sector, considered under the rubric of contract law rather than company law. Because banking is the area of European contract law which is most thoroughly developed, banking contracts can be seen as paradigmatic of typical assumptions and shortcomings often examined in the more general debate on contract law. And indeed, the very thoroughness of European banking contract law makes it a promising ground on which to build effective preventive measures. In this book thirteen noted scholars, recognizing that modern contract law must take into account global markets and risks, consider banking contracts within networks and within mass transactions. Always attending to the long-term relationships that characterize financial services contracts, they focus on such cross-sector issues as the following: rule-setting and the question of who should best regulate and at which level; networks of contracts as the backbone of a market economy; the complex interplay between market regulation and traditional contract law; avoiding erroneous assumptions about the future development of prices; the passing on of the risk via securitization; rating relationships affected by conflicts of interests; remuneration problems; core duties of information and advice in an agency relationship in services; fiduciary duties of loyalty and care; types of clients and level of protection; differentiation in information available on various markets; and the question of enforcement.

The spate of mis-selling episodes that have plagued the financial services industries in recent years has caused widespread detriment to investors. Notwithstanding numerous regulatory interventions, curtailing the incidence of poor investment advice remains a challenge for regulators, particularly because these measures are taken in a 'fire-fighting' fashion without adequate consideration being given to the root causes of mis-selling. Against this backdrop, this book focuses on the sale of complex investment products to corporate retail investors by drawing upon the widespread mis-selling of interest rate hedging products (IRHP) in the UK and beyond. It brings to the fore the relatively understudied field concerning the different degrees of investor protection mechanisms applicable to individual retail investors – as opposed to corporate retail investors – by taking stock of past regulatory reforms and forthcoming regulatory initiatives as well as, more importantly, the conclusions reached by the judiciary in IRHP mis-selling claims. The conclusions are particularly interesting: corporate retail investors are in a vulnerable position when compared to individual retail investors. The former are exposed to a heightened risk of mis-selling, meaning that regulatory intervention should be targeted accordingly. The recommendations made as a result of these findings are further supported by insights emerging from behavioural law and economic theories. This book is aimed at researchers, lawyers and students with an interest in the financial regulation field who are keen to explore potential regulatory reforms to the investment services regime that address the root causes of mis-selling, and restore a level playing field amongst all retail investors.

This book analyses the dichotomy between the goal of social inclusion and the effect of social exclusion through over-indebtedness since 2008 in Europe. Filling a vital gap in the current literature on the effects of the financial and economic crisis, this volume puts into context academic discussion with the real-life dimension of over-indebtedness. Reports from six European countries provide socio-economic and legal information on over-indebtedness as well as the regulatory and judicial responses to the problems entailed by over-indebtedness. They form the empirical background for five analyses of different aspects of the inclusion-exclusion dichotomy. It becomes clear that in the context of credit expansion, individual over-indebtedness has turned into a social issue, which the current design of the consumer credit and mortgage system in Europe has helped to produce while disregarding the consequential danger of social exclusion.

The financial system and its regulation have undergone exponential growth and dramatic reform over the last thirty years. This period has witnessed major developments in the nature and intensity of financial markets, as well as repeated cycles of regulatory reform and development, often linked to crisis conditions. The recent financial crisis has led to unparalleled interest in financial regulation from policymakers, economists, legal practitioners, and the academic community, and has prompted large-scale regulatory reform. The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation is the first comprehensive, authoritative, and state of the art account of the nature of financial regulation. Written by an international team of leading scholars in the field, it takes a contextual and comparative approach to examine scholarly, policy, and regulatory developments in the past three decades. The first three parts of the Handbook address the underpinning horizontal themes which arise in financial regulation: financial systems and regulation; the organization of financial system regulation, including regional examples from the EU and the US; and the delivery of outcomes and regulatory techniques. The final three Parts address the perennial objectives of financial regulation, widely regarded as the anchors of financial regulation internationally: financial stability, market efficiency, integrity, and transparency; and consumer protection. The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of financial regulation, economists, policy-makers and regulators.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, investors have suffered significant losses as a result of breaches of conduct of business rules in the distribution of financial instruments. MiFID II introduced new disclosure, distribution and product governance rules to strengthen the protection of investors but, like MiFID I, did not harmonise the civil law consequences for their violation. This book asks whether, in spite of the silence of the EU legislators, the MiFID II conduct of business rules may produce civil law effects, enabling investors to enforce them against investment firms before national courts and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. Building on the case law of the CJEU, the book shows the conditions under which the breach of MiFID II conduct of business rules should give rise to a private law remedy, and what remedies would be compatible with EU law. MiFID II and Private Law is an essential contribution to academic research in EU and financial law and will be a key text for policy-makers and legal practitioners working in the field of investor protection regulation and mis-selling litigation.

In Rethinking EU Consumer Law, the authors analyse the development of EU consumer law on the basis of a number of clear themes, which are then traced through specific areas. Recurring themes include the artificiality of the EU’s consumer image, the problems created by the drive towards maximum harmonisation, and the unexpected effects EU Consumer Law has had on national law. The book argues that EU Consumer Law has the potential of enhancing the protecting of consumers throughout the EU and could offer a model for consumer law elsewhere in the world, but in order to unlock this potential, there needs to be a rethink with regard to the EU’s approach to consumer law and policy.

In this comparative study in US and EU law, Noah Vardi questions whether there is a legally enforceable duty to lend and borrow credit in a “responsible” manner and clarifies the associated notion of “creditworthiness.”