Who enjoys statutory preferred creditor status? What justifications exist for jurisdictions to maintain statutes that favour 'priority' creditors over other creditors and contributories? This book examines preferential debts derived from specific legislative provisions applying to corporate insolvency. In exploring the concept of preferential treatment, Statutory Priorities in Corporate Insolvency Law includes chapters that provide a doctrinal, theoretical and historical analysis of who enjoys preferred creditor status. As well as examining the traditional major categories of priorities, this work also identifies potential new categories for priority status such as environmental clean-up costs, international creditors, tort claimants and consumers among other non-consensual creditors. While the study focuses on Australian corporate insolvency law, where appropriate, comparisons are made with other common law jurisdictions, particularly the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US.

The question of how we can best regulate the all-important markets for legal services is rarely investigated with the benefit of good empirical evidence about what's wrong and what works. The challenge of doing empirical work in this area is steep, given a lack of data and the complexity of comparing across very different jurisdictions and legal environments. In this much-needed contribution, Frank Stephen usefully brings together a set of empirical studies and an overview of the recent regulatory reforms that have been pursued in the UK and other European jurisdictions in the past two decades. The result will help policymakers make further progress in the increasingly urgent effort to establish efficient and accessible markets for legal services worldwide.' - Gillian K. Hadfield, USC Gould School of Law, US'Frank Stephen draws on thirty years' experience of working on the regulation of the legal professions, and on several empirical studies, to provide a fascinating account of the evolving attempts to introduce competition into the supply of legal services and how such attempts have sometimes been thwarted. It also makes a major contribution to the theoretical debate on the justifications, modes and likely impacts of regulation.' - Anthony Ogus, University of Manchester, UK and University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands 'Professor Stephen's book provides a wonderfully concise, accessible and insightful review of both the theory and the empirical evidence (much of it his) on regulatory restrictions on the provision of legal services and challenges traditional arguments for the self-regulation of the legal profession. His economic/consumer welfare perspective provides a stimulating reference point in ongoing debates on the appropriate regulation of the market for legal services and the case for self-regulation, which (unlike the UK) is still very strongly espoused in North America, but under increasing scrutiny. Professor Stephen s book will intensify this scrutiny.' - Michael Trebilcock, University of Toronto, Canada Frank H. Stephen's evaluation of public policy on the legal profession in UK and European jurisdictions explores how regulation and self-regulation have been liberalized over the past 30 years. The book surveys where the most recent and radical liberalization involving the ownership of law firms by non-lawyers is likely to lead, and appraises the economic literature on the costs and benefits of regulating markets for professional services. It challenges socio-legal views on professional legislation and highlights the limitations of regulatory competition, as well as the importance of dominant business models. The author reviews the empirical work underpinning these theories and policies. He also evaluates the effectiveness of regulatory competition as a response to regulatory capture. Lawyers, Markets and Regulation will be of interest to academics focusing on professional regulation in the fields of economics and law. Lawyers, legal policymakers, competition authorities and regulators will also find the book to be an enlightening read. Contents: Preface 1. Introduction Part I: Why Do We Regulate Lawyers? 2. Why Regulate Lawyers? 3. How Lawyers are Regulated 4. Lawyers and Incentives Part II: Deregulation of Legal Markets in the UK and Europe 5. Liberalization of Legal Markets in UK and EU Jurisdictions 6. Evidence on Effects of Deregulation Part III: The Future of 'Lawyering' 7. Legal Services Act 2007 and the Promotion of Regulatory Competition 8. A Technological Revolution in 'Lawyering'? 9. Summary and Conclusions References Index

Understanding Securities Law and Regulation in Zambia contains commentary in and analysis of securities law in Zambia. The book examines the fiduciary duties of financial intermediaries, the legal and regulatory framework for collective investment schemes, takeovers, mergers and insider dealing. Understanding Securities Law and Regulation in Zambia is the first text to explain and analyse Zambian securities law and in addition, provides the reader with the statutes for ease of reference.

Consumer credit information systems are the tools used by the majority of lenders to manage credit risk, with lenders accessing credit reference databases managed by third party providers to evaluate a consumer's credit application. So far, the subject of consumer credit reporting has been left to the predominant attention of the economic and business management scholarship and little or no consideration has been paid by lawyers. This book aims to rectify this by examining the legal framework and compliance in the European Community (EC) of such consumer information sharing arrangements which have become increasingly integrated in the credit granting practices of the Member States. The book looks at the laws which surround and affect consumer credit reporting, including bank secrecy obligations. Consumer credit reporting and its relationship to human rights is also explored, as every individual is in the EC is entitled to informational privacy. The book asks questions such as to what extent should the privacy of consumers be balanced against the aims and functions of consumer credit reporting, and how do the financial information sharing arrangements comply with the positive law, particularly the European data protection legislation?

Most legal text books and practitioners' guides focus on the impact of financial services law and regulation on individual legal entities: the application of such law and regulation on a group basis is often a cursory afterthought, or neglected altogether. This book reverses the balance. It is the first book to fully and systematically address how groups of businesses within the financial services sector are regulated. It starts with the company law and corporate insolvency law foundations on which groups are established. It then builds up through prudential and resolution-driven regulation, focusing on how such regulations apply and operate at a consolidated group and sub-group level, to the structural responses from firms and counter-responses from legislators and regulators. This new work also considers the tensions that arise from the conflicts between authorities and legal systems on a cross-border basis, and between the formal legal system and the powers and agendas of the regulators. The book covers intragroup transactions, and the role that regulation plays requiring and restricting the movement of financial resources around groups. In its final section, the book applies the principles explored in previous sections to a wide range of transaction types. It is up-to-date as at July 2019, marking the culmination of over 10 years of intense regulatory change, addresses UK ring-fencing rules and EU and US intermediate parent undertaking requirements, and considers the impact of Brexit and the EU banking reform/risk reduction package.

Chinese Insurance Contracts: Law and Practice is the first systematic text written in English on the law of insurance in China. This book offers a critical analysis of the major principles, doctrines and concepts of insurance contract law in China. At every point the analysis discusses the principles of the Insurance Law in detail, referring where appropriate to decided cases and also drawing attention to external influences. Readers are guided through the complexities of Chinese law in a clear and comprehensive fashion, and - significantly - in a manner that is accessible and meaningful for those used to a common law system. This book presents a comprehensive picture of Chinese insurance contract law, to facilitate a wider understanding of the relevant rules of law. Elements of insurance contract law are critically examined. In addition, this book presents rules of law on some special types of insurance contract, such as life insurance, property insurance, liability insurance, motor vehicle insurance, reinsurance, and marine insurance. The deficiencies and shortcomings of the law and practice will be identified and analysed; suggestions and recommendations on how to reform the law will be presented. Chinese Insurance Contracts also offers legal and practical advice to insurance professionals on how to draft clauses to avoid contractual pitfalls. It also uses cases to illustrate the difficulties which can arise in applying the principles in practice. This book will be essential reading for insurance companies and legal practitioners looking to do business in China, as well as reference for Chinese lawyers practising insurance law. It will also be a useful resource for students and academics studying Chinese law.

The book provides a critical analysis of electronic alternatives to documents used in the international sale of goods carried by sea, including invoices, bills of lading, certificates of insurance, as well as other documentation required under documentary credits, and payment processing arrangements. It constitutes an in-depth discussion of their legal status and the practices relating to their use. The new edition examines recent developments in the evolving digital transformation that is taking place in the field of international trade. The book examines the commercial pressure to move from paper to electronic data, and the new technologies and relationships built for this purpose. This transition is ever evolving and as such an understanding of the attendant legal implications of the change is crucial. Analysis is provided on the adoption by UNCITRAL of its Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records, the author having been involved first hand in its drafting as a delegate and observer in UNCITRAL Working Group IV, and on the Uniform Rules on Bank Payment Obligations (URBPO). The book considers the practical workings and legal underpinnings of new electronic bill of lading platforms such as e-Title and Placing Platform Limited and of pilot projects such as Wave BL, Marco Polo and Voltron. It also examines the legal implications of proposed uses of new technologies such as distributed ledger technologies (DLT) (including blockchain), Internet of Things (IoT) and smart contracts. This book provides a complete and practical analysis of e-documents in cross-border business contracts for goods carried by sea. It examines recent trends in practice and assesses the ability of electronic alternatives to achieve legal functions performed by the paper documents they replace.

The study conducted by the Centre of European Economic Research (ZEW), the University of Mannheim and Ernst & Young contributes to the ongoing evaluation of the proposal for a Draft Council Directive on a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CC(C)TB) released by the European Commission on March 16, 2011. For the first time, details on the determination of taxable income under the proposed Council Directive are compared to prevailing corporate tax accounting regulations in all 27 Member States, Switzerland and the US. The study presents evidence on the scope of differences and similarities between national tax accounting regulations and the Directive's treatment in a complete, yet concise form. Based on this comprehensive comparison, it goes on to discuss remaining open questions and adjustments needed if the Directive is to be implemented in national tax law. Readers seeking a basis for taking an active part in the public debate will find a valuable source of information and a first impression of how the proposed CC(C)TB would affect corporate tax burdens in the European Union.

The first book dedicated to this subject, Private International Law of Reinsurance and Insurance provides a practical and easy-to-use reference in this complex area of law. This book provides a clear and useful guide to identifying the applicable legal regimes and relevant rules insofar as they concern reinsurance and insurance disputes. It offers authoritative guidance on the Jurisdiction Regulation 44/2001, the Rome Convention on Choice of Law and the 2001 Insurance Directives and regulations, as well as the common law.

This volume presents philosophical contributions examining questions of the grounding and justification of taxation and different types of taxes such as inheritance, wealth, consumption or income tax in relation to justice and the concept of a just society. The chapters cover the different levels at which the discussion on taxation and justice takes place: On the principal level, chapters investigate the justification and grounding of taxation as such and the role taxation plays and should play in the design of justice, be it for a just society or a just world order. On a more concrete level, chapters present discussions of these general reflections in more depth and examine different types of taxation, tax systems and their design and implementation. On an applied level, chapters discuss certain specific taxes, such as wealth and inheritance taxes, and examine whether or not a certain tax should be favored and for what reasons as well as why it is just to target certain kinds of assets or income. Finally, this volume contains chapters that discuss the central issue of international and global taxation and their relation to global justice.

Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but - as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work - we've only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or 'guardrails' can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

Long before the spectacular collapse of Bre-X in 1997, the Canadian capital markets had their share of swindlers and crooks. In the boom times after Second World War, hard-sell speculative mining ventures, pushing what often amounted to a few acres of moose pasture, riddled over-the-counter markets and the TSE. It was in this context that the Ontario Securities Commission developed into Canada's leading securities regulator. Following the war, the OSC concerned itself primarily with fraudsters and attempts to reign in Toronto's boiler rooms, but by the mid-sixties increasingly sophisticated markets and a series of scandals culminating in the Windfall affair resulted in a rewriting of the Securities Act and a widening of the OSC's investor protection mandate. The seventies tested the Commission's new powers as increased corporate merger activity brought the phrase "insider-trading" into the popular lexicon.

Surprisingly, considering that capital markets have such a profound impact on Canada's well-being, this is the first thorough study of the their post-war evolution and regulation. Moose Pastures and Mergers takes off where the author's acclaimed previous work, Blue Skies and Boiler Rooms: Buying and Selling Securities in Canada, 1870 - 1940, left off. With an ear for a good story - seedy personalities, bunglers and guileless victims abound - and a scholar's rigour, Armstrong has met the protean beast of share markets head on and revealed its shape for the timid or the merely baffled. Essential reading for business journalists, securities lawyers, academics, and interested investors.

Winner of the J.J. Talman Award presented by the Ontario Historical Society

In the next wave of conduct regulation in financial markets, from 2021 conduct regulators in the UK and elsewhere expect firms to produce evidence on how they are improving behaviour and culture. Facing this, many practitioners are anxious that their current reporting and management information (MI) are irrelevant to meeting as-yet unclear regulatory expectations. This book provides the insights and tools firms need to report on culture, securing both enhanced business value and the regulator's approval. Culture is now seen as a key contributor to good governance, feeding into existing discourse on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and the emerging dialogue on 'non-financial (mis)conduct', but conventional measures of business quality are unfit for the new reporting agenda. Culture Audit in Financial Services follows the arc of 'behavioural regulation' to examine what the regulator really wants, before offering guidance on how culture audit differs from conventional auditing, how to put the latest pure-research findings to work, and the key features of well-designed conduct and culture reports. Written by an impartial author and a variety of contributors with extensive experience working with practitioners, regulators, and many of the world's finest academic initiatives, this book is filled with practical, grounded advice on how best to approach this new challenge and avoid infractions.

This volume analyzes the legal and practical issues that arise in cross-border transactions involving the taking and enforcement of security over movable and intangible property. Having analyzed the domestic law of security in the UK, US, France and Germany, it then focuses upon the private international law and insolvency law issues. Contributions come from leading legal, insolvency and banking specialists drawn from the relevant jurisdictions, providing a comparative perspective on each topic discussed. Coverage includes a focused, practical, case-study plus input from banking and insolvency professionals.

Social enterprises are regarded as a vital solution to the pressing problem of socio-economic inequality and play a crucial role in the delivery of public goods and services. Ernest Lim argues that social enterprises in four leading Asian jurisdictions - India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia - should have a new legal form. This entails advancing a nuanced and comprehensive framework consisting of five criteria: (1) corporate purpose; (2) directors' duties; (3) decision-making powers; (4) reporting, impact measurement and certification; and (5) distribution of dividends, assets, and tax benefits. This invaluable work demonstrates that the existing legal forms in common law Asia, the UK and the US do not properly address the various conflicts of interest affecting social enterprises. An essential read for those interested in understanding and evaluating the laws and regulations on social enterprises, as well as designing and implementing creative ones to protect and promote these important businesses.

The Law of Restitution is now firmly established as a distinct branch of the law of obligations. Yet for much of the past 25 years its status has been the subject of debate both in the courts and in academia and there are those who still regard it with suspicion. This is therefore an appropriate time to publish the collected essays of a scholar who has made a significant contribution to the study of restitution and who has established a distinctive position on many of its most keenly disputed controversies. For this collection the author has chosen a number of previously published and influential papers which he has selectively revised and updated, together with a number of completely new papers which present his latest views on a range of issues central to the law of restitution.

This book examines key methodological and organizational questions with regard to assessing the quality of internal audits. By studying the status quo of these audits in the public sector, including municipalities, it identifies relevant weaknesses, loopholes and issues. In addition, the book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the approved control system to explain the reasons why, and conditions under which, internal audits are ineffective, and proposes new metric and non-metric indicators to improve the quality of internal auditing. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable guide for anyone responsible for financial controls and internal audits, and will appeal to students and financial practitioners alike.

The integrity of tax systems as we know them are being challenged throughout the world. Tax avoidance schemes of various kinds are proving increasingly attractive and lucrative to wealthy individuals and large corporations. As governments fear the erosion of their tax base among those who are most able to contribute, the public is looking on, as one of its most public institutions attempts to re-invent itself through changing laws and administrative procedures. In this book, a number of experts develop the idea of responsive regulation in relation to taxation. They demonstrate how law in this area is undermining social norms and social norms are undermining law. A key factor in their analysis is the perception of justice. Explanations as to why the integrity of tax systems is under siege, and possible solutions, are examined.

This open access book is the seventeenth volume in the Swedish Studies in European Law, reflecting the series aim to explore the variety of issues and dilemmas that European law faces in specific areas of EU law and policy, as well as overarching questions of EU institutional and constitutional law. In this volume, experts explore the development of the role of Europe and European law in the field of taxation. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Swedish Studies Network.

This book provides theoretical perspectives on systemic discrimination in employment and an overview of policy and institutional responses in eight countries, focusing on affirmative action and employment equity policies. As a unique international comparative survey and assessment of affirmative action and employment equity policies, this is a sourcebook for researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of public policy, employment law, sociology, industrial relations and human rights.

Contemporary Issues in Economic and Financial Analysis 99 includes fourteen studies on contemporary issues within governance and regulations by authors invited from various universities and institutions. The chapters are a mix of discussion-based studies and empirical research studies aimed at understanding particular aspects of governance and regulations. Some refer to a particular country-specifically Malta, Indonesia, and India-and others are more generic and/or European-focused. These chapters include studies of the following: the challenges of corporate governance in small family-owned firms; a credit institution's perspective for managing conduct risk in the boardroom; the implications of the regulation and governance of financial advice in Europe for the retail financial advice sector and its consumers; the barriers to the development of Maltese cooperatives; corporate governance and cash holdings in Indian firms; whether good governance fosters trust in the government; the impact of takeover bids on European law and corporate governance; the developments and outcomes of the reform of the doctrine of "utmost good faith" in the UK; whether corporate decisions in Indonesia are a result of corporate governance requirements; earning management and audit reports; the European deposit insurance scheme; product intervention of supervisory authorities in financial services; the teaching of financial services regulation; how to link the human element to the risk management process, which is one of the internal control processes in governance of an organisation; and whether the transparency regime on the financial institutions market really works.

There has been insufficient literature focusing on the world-changing rise of Asian wealth. Private wealth in Asia is very substantial, with 33 per cent of the global population of high-net-worth individuals based in Asia. Yet, there is a dearth of legal analysis of Asian wealth, particularly by texts written in English. This collection aims to fill that gap, with chapters on legal issues in relation to Asian wealth transmission, investments in international real estate, familial disputes, family offices and private trust companies. A substantive section of this book also focuses on the changing legal context with chapters exploring trusts and cryptoassets, constructive trust, trustee's discretion and decision-making, changing regulatory environment and abuse of trust structures. This collection of essays on trusts and wealth management presents a focus on Asian wealth and the changing legal context, and follows the related publication, Trusts and Modern Wealth Management (Cambridge University Press, 2018).