Due to the absence of due process and other procedural guarantees generally offered by judicial enforcement, informal debt collection practices (IDCPs) can become abusive, harming both consumers and the economy by threatening consumers' physical, psychological, and economic wellbeing; exposing lawabiding debt collectors to unfair competition; undermining the financial system; and negatively impacting social peace by resorting to criminal activity. The need to control and harmonize IDCPs surfaced in connection with the European Commission's Action Plan to tackle the high level of non-performing loans caused by the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic -specifically the Proposal for a Directive on Credit Servicers, Credit Purchasers, and the Recovery of Collateral (CSD). Harmonizing the regulation of abusive IDCPs is vital for several reasons. First, IDCPs have a cross-border dimension due to the freedom of movement, enabling debt collection operations across the internal market. Second, the internal market's size amounts to over 450 million citizens potentially exposed to abusive IDCPs. The regulatory frameworks addressing IDCPs in the E.U. display divergent characteristics that may be difficult to navigate and require creating a level-playing field for consumers and debt collectors, especially when approaches vary at Member State level. This book addresses this gap by providing a comprehensive guide to regulating informal debt collection practices in eight Member States of the E.U. and the United Kingdom (U.K.). It serves as a comparative law instrument for implementing the recently adopted CSD. It will be important reading for students, academics, and stakeholders with an interest in debt collection practices and the law.

In a context of neoliberal globalization, have the processes of elaboration and implementation of foreign investors' responsibilities by intergovernmental organizations reached the realm of legality? Using an analytical framework and a methodology that combines international law with international relations, this book provides a twofold answer to this question. First, it demonstrates that the normative integration of foreign investors' responsibilities in international investment law is fragmented and consistent with the interests of the most powerful actors. Second, while using the interactional theory of international law to assess the normative character of several international instruments elaborated and implemented by intergovernmental organizations, it highlights the sense of obligation that each instrument generates. The analysis demonstrates that such a codification process is marked by relations of power and has resulted in several social norms, with relatively few legal norms.

In 2020, the G20 proposed a solution for the debt-related issues affecting the world's poorest countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their initiatives have failed to meet their objectives. The author argues that the reason for this failure is the inability to bring sovereign countries to the table to re-negotiate their debt agreements with private creditors as they fear credit rating agencies and the prospect of a downgrade. The author refers to this as the 'credit rating impasse'. This book proposes a novel solution. The author asserts that there is a need in the literature to unpick the dynamic that exists and creates that impasse, namely the pressures that exist between sovereign states, private creditors, credit rating agencies, and the geo-political backdrop that is massively influential in the dynamic, that is, the adversarial relationship between China and the US. This book addresses the recent history of debt treatment for poorer countries and related successes and failures: COVID-19-related issues and the development of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative and the Common Framework for Debt Treatment. This book examines the reasons for their failure by analysing the positions of the sovereign states, the division between private and official creditors and between multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, credit rating agencies, and the competing political entities of China and the US. It presents a wider picture of the systemic underpinnings to such debt-related issues and, when examined through a geo-political perspective, the subsequent chances of future debt treatment-related successes. Licence line: The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Serving as an introduction to one of the "hottest" topics in financial crime, the Value Added Tax (VAT) fraud, this new and original book aims to analyze and decrypt the fraud and explore multi-disciplinary avenues, thereby exposing nuances and shades that remain concealed by traditional taxation oriented researches. Quantifying the impact of the fraud on the real economy underlines the structural damages propagated by this crime in the European Union. The 'fruadsters' benefit when policy changes are inflicted in an economic space without a fully fledged legal framework. Geopolitical events like the creation of the Eurasian Union and 'Brexit' are analyzed from the perspective of the VAT fraud, thereby underlining the foreseeable risks of such historical turnarounds. In addition, this book also provides a unique collection of case studies that depict the main characteristics of VAT fraud. Introduction to VAT Fraud will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regards to banking and finance law, international law, criminal law, taxation, accounting, and financial crime. It will be of value to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of law, financial crime, technology, accounting and taxation.

This book explores the various considerations for achieving an effective regulatory strategy to improve financial access and usage in Nigeria and beyond. Gaps in the legal and institutional framework for digital financial services (DFS) as well as the barriers that contribute to financial exclusion are identified as are the policy changes needed to provide more extensive, accessible and sustainable financial inclusion value. In addition, the book covers divergent themes around the use of and insights for regulating industry financial services providers and challenger entities that herald industry disruption. The book adopts three research methods. The doctrinal research method is used to buttress the law and development analysis and the themes around regulation, adoption and usage of financial services. To elucidate the application of financial innovations, comparative case studies are drawn from selected jurisdictions including Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, The Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, Uganda, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Lastly, using the empirical research method, the author reports the burden experienced by the residents of a community without banks in accessing finance. Included in this discussion are the barriers to finance as well as the coping strategies adopted by the community residents to access formal and informal finance.

First Published in 1964. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

- Unique, practical text that gives step-by-step guidance in a growing area of legal practice - Supported by real-life examples, study questions, and multiple choice questions online. - Author is a practising attorney specialising in bankruptcy law, as well as an experience lecturer at a range of US institutions.

Tax Avoidance and the Law is a helpful guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students who want a thorough understanding of this dynamic area of law. The book is written in a way which is easy to follow and conveniently summarises complex case law on tax avoidance. Tax Avoidance and the Law explores the evolution of the UK's General Anti- Abuse Rule. It provides a useful comparison with other Western jurisdictions' anti-avoidance legislation, including the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the EU. The underlying theme of the book rests on the notion that the taxpayer's subjective motives, intentions or purposes are irrelevant when assessing tax liability. The book enables students to gain a good grasp of the fundamental issues in tax avoidance in a clear manner.

This book examines the regulatory framework, regulatory objectives, regulatory logics, regulatory instruments, regulatory failures, and regulatory responses in China's financial market after the global financial crisis. The book provides an in-depth analysis of China's contemporary financial regulatory system, focusing on risks, regulation, and policies in practice. By drawing on public and private interest theories relating to financial regulation, the book contends that the controlled development of the banking sector, and the financial sector generally, has transformed China's banks into more market-oriented institutions and increased public sector growth. However, China's financial market and financial regulation have some inherent weaknesses and deficiencies. This book also offers insights into how this can be improved or adapted to minimize systemic risks in China's financial sector. This book tries to prove that financial regulation is not just a vehicle for maintaining efficient financial markets but a primary tool through which the Chinese government achieves its political and economic objectives. More fundamentally, according to the law and finance theory, strong market and vibrant judicial systems are needed to further modernize China's financial markets and market economy. The book will be a useful reference for anyone interested in learning from the Chinese experience.

Crypto-Finance, Law and Regulation investigates whether crypto-finance will cause a paradigm shift in regulation from a centralised model to a model based on distributed consensus. This book explores the emergence of a decentralised and disintermediated crypto-market and investigates the way in which it can transform the financial markets. It examines three components of the financial market - technology, finance, and the law - and shows how their interrelationship dictates the structure of a crypto-market. It focuses on regulators' enforcement policies and their jurisdiction over crypto-finance operators and participants. The book also discusses the latest developments in crypto-finance, and the advantages and disadvantages of crypto-currency as an alternative payment product. It also investigates how such a decentralised crypto-finance system can provide access to finance, promote a shared economy, and allow access to justice. By exploring the law, regulation and governance of crypto-finance from a national, regional and global viewpoint, the book provides a fascinating and comprehensive overview of this important topic and will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners interested in regulation, finance and the law.

This book brings together politics, law, financial services regulation, economics and housing policy in the analysis of mortgage lending and macroprudential policy in the UK and US.

Moral Hazard is a core concept in economics. In a nutshell, moral hazard reflects the reduced incentive to protect against risk where an entity is (or believes it will be) protected from its consequences, whether through an insurance arrangement or an implicit or explicit guarantee system. It is fundamentally driven by information asymmetry, arises in all sectors of the economy, including banking, medical insurance, financial insurance, and governmental support, undermines the stability of our economic systems and has burdened taxpayers in all developed countries, resulting in significant costs to the community. Despite the seriousness and pervasiveness of moral hazard, policymakers and scholars have failed to address this issue. This book fills this gap. It covers 200 years of moral hazard: from its origins in the 19th century to the bailouts announced in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the ethics and other fundamental issues connected to moral hazard. Part II provides historical and empirical evidence on moral hazard in international finance. It examines in turn the role of the export credit industry, the international lender of last resort, and the IMF. Finally, Part III examines specific sectors such as automobile, banking, and the US industry at large. This is the first book to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of moral hazard and explain why addressing this issue has become crucial today. As such, it will attract interest from scholars across different fields, including economists, political scientists and lawyers.

There is little literature on the development of banking regulation in Nigeria, or the scope of powers of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which is its core banking sector regulator. The critical impetus of this book is to contribute to the literature of this area, with a detailed exploration of the Nigerian regulatory architecture. In addition, the book also engages in a comparative analysis with two emerging economies in Africa: South Africa and Kenya. It also considers the UK and the US as comparator jurisdictions in light of their regulatory responses to the global financial crisis of 2008. This book contributes to the ongoing discourse in this area by exploring, in detail, the theoretical underpinnings of regulation and supervision, to determine whether there is an understanding of what constitutes effective regulation in these jurisdictions. Given that Nigeria is the core jurisdictional focus, a historical account of banking exchanges from the pre-colonial era to more recent times is provided. Offering an understanding of how political, local and economic settings, in conjunction with the theories of regulation, have impacted and influenced regulatory development in Nigeria, the book engages in an examination of Nigeria's historical experiences with bank failures, including the banking crisis it experienced in 2008. The newly enacted Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act 2020 is also explored as part of this discourse. Through a critical analysis of the law, the book demonstrates that the Nigerian regulator has historically adopted a reactionary strategy, instead of a proactive and pragmatic approach, which is imperative for an effective regulatory regime. The outcome of this analysis is that there are lessons to be learned, and proposals are discussed in order to rethink the act of banking regulation.

This is a much-needed work in the financial literature, and it is the first book ever to analyse the use of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) from a theoretical and practical perspective. By the end of 2020, more than 240 SPACs were listed in the US (on NASDAQ or the NYSE), raising a record $83 billion. The SPAC craze has been shaking the US for months, mainly because of its simplicity: a bunch of investors decides to buy shares at a fixed price in a company that initially has no assets. In this way, a SPAC, also known as a "blank check company", is created as an empty shell with lots of money to spend on a corporate shopping spree. Could the trend be here to stay? Are SPACs the new legitimate path to traditional IPO? This book tackles those questions and more. The author provides a thorough analysis of SPACs including their legal framework and how they are used as a risk mitigation tool to structure transactions. The main objectives of the book are focused on finding a working definition for SPACs and theorising on their origins, definition, and evolution; identifying the objectives of financial regulation within the context of the recent financial crisis (2007-2010) and the one that is currently unfolding (Covid-19); and also describing practical examples of SPACs through a comparative study that, for the first time, outlines every major capital market on which SPACs are listed, in order to identify a possible international standard of regulation. The book is relevant to academics as well as policymakers, international financial regulators, corporate finance lawyers as well as to the financial industry tout court.

Money is a legal institution with principal economic and sociological consequences. Money is a debt, because that is how it is conceptualised and comes into existence: as circulating credit - if viewed from the creditor's perspective - or, from the debtor's viewpoint, as debt. This book presents a legal theory of money, based on the concept of dematerialised property. It describes the money creation or money supply process for cash and for bank money, and looks at modern forms of money, such as cryptocurrencies. It also shows why mainstream economics presupposes, but avoids an analysis of, money by effectively eliminating money from the microeconomic market model and declaring it as merely a neutral medium of exchange and unit of account. The book explains that money rather brings about and influences substantially the exchange or transaction it is supposed to facilitate only as a neutral medium. As the most liquid of all assets, money enables financialisation, monetisation and commodification in the economy. The central role of the banks in the money creation process and in the economy, and their strengthened position after the bank rescue measures in the wake of the financial crisis 2008-9 are also discussed. Providing a rigorous analysis of the most salient legal issues regarding money, this book will appeal to legal theorists, economists and anyone working in commercial or banking law.

Beyond identifying and characterising the particular types of risk and liability that may arise in decentralised digital economies, this book suggests safeguards for different types of distributed networks. It explores relationships between people and will be of interest to academics, practitioners, and students.

As a social process that places great stock in its stability and predictability, law does not deal easily or well with change. In a modern world that is in a constant and rapid state of flux, law is being placed under considerable stress in its efforts to fulfill its task as a primary regulator of social and economic behaviour. This challenge is particularly acute in the realm of technology and its profound ramifications for social and economic behaviour. The innovative Techno-Age not only offers fresh ways of handling old problems, but also throws up entirely new problems; traditional ways of thinking about and responding to these old and new problems and their optimal resolution are no longer as tenable as many once thought. One such example is the burgeoning world of cryptocurrencies - this peer-to-peer digital network presents a profound challenge to the status quo of the financial services sector, to the established modes of state-backed fiat currency, and to the regulatory authority and reach of law. Taken together, these related challenges demand the urgent attention of jurists, lawyers and law reformers. It is the future and relevance of legal regulation as much as cryptocurrency that is at stake. This book proposes an approach to regulating cryptocurrency that recognises and retains its innovative and transformative potential, but also identifies and deals with some of its less appealing qualities and implications.

Global Finance in the 21st Century: Stability and Sustainability in a Fragmenting World explains finance and its regulation after the global financial crisis. The book introduces non-finance scholars into the wider debate regarding the conduct and regulation of finance to encourage broader discussion on important societal issues that relate to finance. The book also explores the ineffectiveness of the current approach to global prudential governance and places this discussion within the more expansive context of global governance and nationalism in the twenty-first century. The book argues that fragmentation and the growing trend of promoting informality and voluntarism has facilitated a return to nationalism as a primary form of global governance that acts contrary to post-crisis reforms that seek to promote stability and sustainability in the conduct of finance. As a remedy, Kourabas suggests that we need more, not less, of what we have traditionally conceived as international law - treaties and treaty-based international organisations. In the field of finance, this means not only pursuing financial liberalisation through free trade and investment treaties, but also the inclusion of provisions in these treaties that promotes systemic financial stability and sustainable development objectives. Of interest to legal and non-legal academics and students, legal professionals and policy-makers, this book offers a nuanced defence of international law as an approach to global governance in finance and beyond, as well as reform of international law to meet the needs of twenty-first century society.

Globalisation has opened new avenues to corruption. Corrupt practices are proliferating not only within national borders but across different countries. Despite many national and international anti-corruption bodies and strategies, corruption far from being eradicated. There is an urgent global demand for a better understanding of corruption as a phenomenon and a thorough assessment of the existing regulatory remedies, towards the establishment of more effective (and possibly uniform) anti-corruption measures. Our previous collection, Corruption in the Global Era (Routledge, 2019), analysed the causes, the sources, and the forms of manifestation of global corruption. An ideal continuation of that volume, this book moves from the analysis of the phenomenon of corruption to that of the regulatory remedies against corruption and for the promotion of integrity. Corruption, Integrity and the Law provides a unique interdisciplinary assessment of the global anti-corruption legal framework. The collection gathers top experts in different fields of both the academic and the professional world - including criminal law, EU law, international law, competition law, corporate law and ethics. It analyses legal instruments adopted not only at a supranational level but also by different countries, in the attempt of establishing an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue between theory and practice and between different legal systems towards a better global promotion of integrity. This book will be of value to researchers, academics and students in the fields of law, criminology, sociology, economics, ethics as well as professionals - especially solicitors, barristers, businessmen and public servants.

Foundations of International Commercial Law provides a fresh analysis of both the contextual features of International Commercial Law and a range of different International Commercial Law instruments. This text covers the various elements which comprise International Commercial Law, the academic debates about the lex mercatoria and harmonisation, as well as a discussion of selected conventions and other instruments. International Commercial Law is concerned with commercial transactions which have an international dimension, for example contracts between parties from multiple jurisdictions. As an area of study, it is characterised by the interaction of a wide range of national and international legal sources which all shape the overall context within which international commercial contracts are made and performed. This book focuses on the international legal sources in particular. It first explores all the different elements which together comprise the context of international commercial transactions, before examining the process of making International Commercial Law. Specific instruments of International Commercial Law discussed in the book include the conventions on the international sale of goods, agency, financial leasing, factoring, receivables financing and secured interests in mobile equipment, together with the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and documentary credits. There are separate chapters on private international law and international commercial arbitration, and a final chapter exploring the existing and potential impact of the digital economy on International Commercial Law. Offering a detailed overview of the main themes and key aspects of International Commercial Law, this book is for readers who are new to the subject, whether undergraduate or postgraduate students, legal scholars, practitioners or policymakers.

The European Sovereign Debt Crisis: Breaking the Vicious Circle between Sovereigns and Banks explains why the euro area's progress towards reining in the risks arising from the well-documented bi-directional financial contagion transmission mechanism that links sovereigns to commercial banks has been more prominent compared to the channel of contagion moving from banks to sovereigns. Providing an analysis of the legal and regulatory measures that Europe and the euro area have taken to mitigate the exposure of sovereigns to financial crises generated by commercial banks, this book draws attention to areas where improvements to the arsenal of tools hitherto introduced are either desirable or necessary. Chapters further explain - with recourse to economic and legal arguments - why the channel of contagion moving from sovereigns to commercial banks has proven harder to close, and explores ways in which progress could be made in the direction of closing it so as to avert the risk of future banking sector crises. This work provides essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in sovereign debt crises and the euro-area banking system.

Islam encourages business and financial transactions as a way of securing the basic needs for all human beings, but these need to be conducted in accordance with the principles contained in the Qur'an and Sunnah. However, these legal concepts are not classified subject-wise, and the verses on commercial law, like all other topics, are scattered throughout the Qur'an, making it difficult for readers to gain a full understanding of the topic. This, therefore, is the first comprehensive book to demystify Islamic contract law and specifically Islamic financial contracts, and to examine its roots and history. The book is written in a clear style to allow for a greater understanding of the more challenging and misunderstood areas pertaining to Islamic business and financial contracts. It also contributes a series of chapters which address the market niche and need, concerning Shariah compliance for Islamic financial products and services. The book is divided into 16 chapters in order to provide a holistic and thorough overview of Islamic law of contract. It covers the objections and misconceptions surrounding Islamic business and financial contracts. It also includes the key features and guiding principles of Islamic law of contract and offers technical know-how, illustrating the concept of formation of a contract, as well as the essential elements of a valid contract. The authors also offer a discussion on the system of options under Islamic business and financial contracts and potential solutions to breach of contracts. The book will serve as a handy reference for scholars and students of Islamic business and finance and Islamic commercial law and will also be beneficial for practitioners as well as legal and judicial officers. It will open new doors for further research in the field of Islamic financial contracts.

The book presents a collective action perspective to explain how extraterritoriality functions and assess when, and to what extent, extraterritoriality is effective. A collective action perspective provides a new account of foreign anti-bribery laws and their extraterritorial enforcement that draws on theories discussed in the field of economic governance. Within this framework, the book offers an intensive analysis of US foreign anti-bribery law such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), international law as it emanates from the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and comparative insights into UK law and German law. To test the theory in practice, the book provides a unique data set of more than 40 foreign anti-bribery enforcement actions conducted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other examples from comparative jurisdictions. Extraterritoriality and International Bribery is ideal reading for academics and students with an interest in global governance, economic crime, criminology, and law and economics, as well as practitioners concerned with foreign anti-bribery enforcement, including compliance officers, lawyers, investigating and prosecuting authorities, and business leaders. The book also discusses governance alternatives existing outside international anti-bribery law and offers policy and legal reforms proposals. The book suggests a decentralized enforcement model with the delegation of some enforcement tasks to an external body as the most appropriate governance alternative.

This book tracks the phenomenon of international corporate personhood (ICP) in international law and explores many legal issues raised in its wake. It sketches a theory of the ICP and encourages engagement with its amorphous legal nature through reimagination of international law beyond the State, in service to humanity. The book offers two primary contributions, one descriptive and one normative. The descriptive section of the book sketches a history of the emergence of the ICP and discusses existing analogical approaches to theorizing the corporation in international law. It then turns to an analysis of the primary judicial decisions and international legal instruments that animate internationally a concept that began in U.S. domestic law. The descriptive section concludes with a list of twenty-two judge-made and text-made rights and privileges presently available to the ICP that are not available to other international legal personalities; these are later categorized into 'active' and 'passive' rights. The normative section of the book begins the shift from what is to what ought to be by sketching a theory of the ICP that - unlike existing attempts to place the corporation in international legal theory - does not rely on analogical reasoning. Rather, it adopts the Jessupian emphasis on 'human problems' and encourages pragmatic, solution-oriented legal analysis and interpretation, especially in arbitral tribunals and international courts where legal reasoning is frequently borrowed from domestic law and international treaty regimes. It suggests that ICPs should have 'passive' or procedural rights that cater to problems that can be characterized as 'universal' but that international law should avoid universalizing 'active' or substantive rights which ICPs can shape through agency. The book concludes by identifying new trajectories in law relevant to the future and evolution of the ICP. This book will be most useful to students and practitioners of international law but provides riveting material for anyone interested in understanding the phenomenon of international corporate personhood or the international law surrounding corporations more generally.

Social science theorists from various scholarly disciplines have contributed to a recent literature that examines how the finance industry has expanded and now wields increasing influence across a variety of economic fields and industries. In some cases, this tendency towards a more sizeable and influential finance industry has been referred to as "the financialization" of the economy. This book explains how what is referred to as the finance-led economy (arguably a more neutral and less emotionally charged term than financialization) is premised on a number of conditions, institutional relations, and theoretical propositions and assumptions, and indicates what the real economic consequences are for market actors and households. The book provides a theoretically condensed but empirically grounded account of the contemporary finance-led economy, in many cases too complicated in its design and rich in detail to be understood equally by insiders-empirical research indicates-and lay audiences. It summarizes the relevant literature and points at two empirical cases, the construction industry and life science venturing, to better illustrate how the expansion of the finance industry has contributed to the capital formation process, and how the sovereign state has actively assisted this process. It offers a credible, yet accessible overview of the economic conditions that will arguably shape economic affairs for the foreseeable future. The book will find an audience amongst a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policymakers, and management consultants.