What are the criteria used by Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union to blacklist jurisdictions at high-risk of money laundering? What are the countries at highest risk according to Panama Papers and FinCEN files? Where do criminals move their illicit money, according to judicial and investigative evidence? This book answers these questions. It is an unprecedented study on the countries at highest risk of attracting money laundering and organised crime proceeds - and how they are identified as such by scholars, policy-makers and anti-money laundering (AML) practitioners. It targets an issue which is central to the policy debate, in the media, but is under-studied. This book is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the concept of money laundering risk, its main determinants, and carries out a review of extant country ratings, ranging from official blacklists and grey lists, to media leaks and scholarly papers. Part II discusses the weaknesses and the myths behind the current ratings and proposes a new approach to assess the risk of money laundering across countries. With a critical research perspective, empirically driven, this book aims to satisfy both scholars and students - in particular from criminology, economics, and international relations - and practitioners from banks, professional firms, and AML authorities.

International mergers and acquisitions play a vital role behind the growth of a company. This book explores the hurdles involved and how to navigate through the review processes set up by national regulatory agencies such as the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), the EU Commission, and the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of State Administration of Market Regulation of China (AMB). This book is unique and showcases how to anticipate, develop, and implement successful strategies to support mergers and acquisitions activities, particularly of interest to finance and law students, researchers, and academics.

A tax convention (or tax treaty) is an official agreement between two countries on the administration of taxation when the domestic tax legislation of the respective states applies simultaneously to a particular issue or taxpayer (e.g., when a taxpayer resident in one country derives income from sources in the other country). Tax conventions provide a means of settling on a uniform basis the most common problems that arise in the field of international double taxation. More than 2,000 bilateral tax treaties between countries of the world are based on the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Model Tax Convention. This book offers the reader a practical introduction to the law of income and capital tax conventions based on the OECD Convention as well as selected legislation and case law. It's an ideal reference for lawyers and tax professionals who want to expand their familiarity with tax treaties.

This book is a major work that focuses exclusively on ship finance and includes contributions on the increasingly complex field of ship finance, which has over the last two decades become a key aspect in the world of shipping and ship owning. The book offers an enlightening mix of theoretical analysis and well-founded practical insights into the daily markets. Given that ship finance continues to develop dynamically around the world, the book covers subjects ranging from the German KG market to Islamic Finance, from loans to legal aspects and from asset pricing to risk management.

Any policy aimed at resolution of a banking crisis determines which constituents - depositors, creditors, shareholders, the banking industry, and society as a whole - eventually bear the costs associated with a banking crisis, thus giving rise to legitimacy and accountability concerns. Rather than what the recent financial crisis has engendered - mostly ad hoc reactions that socialize losses but not profits - what is required, this incisive analysis shows, is an equitable and viable resolution framework, based on burden sharing, enshrined in law, and designed to deal with bank failures in a way that balances private and public interests.

This book explains how a creditor of an insolvent debtor can take priority over other creditors by claiming a proprietary interest in assets held by the debtor, and concentrates on the circumstances in which proprietary interests are created by operation of law or are implied from the arrangements between the parties. This is a subject of particular importance and difficulty in common law systems because of the changeable nature of equitable proprietary interests, and this book provides a clear and structured explanation of the current state of the law, with detailed reference to case law from England and Wales as well as Commonwealth jurisprudence, and suggests how it might be clarified and simplified by returning to first principles. The new edition considers a number of important developments which pertain to proprietary rights and insolvency. It evaluates the key decision of the Supreme Court in FHR European Ventures v Cedar Capital Partners. Although this has settled the question of whether constructive trusts extend to bribes, it has raised more general issues regarding the approach of the courts to the imposition of proprietary remedies, which the book explores. It also covers recent Privy Council and Court of Appeal decisions concerning constructive notice (Credit Agricole v Papadimitrou, Central Bank of Ecuador v Conticorp, and SFO v Lexi), as well as interesting issues concerning the new status of intangibles (Armstrong v Winnington) and the status of the anti-deprivation rule (Belmont Park v BNY). Proprietary Rights and Insolvency is a lucid and practical reference source on insolvency and property law.

If a dispute between commercial parties reaches the stage of arbitration, the cause is usually ambiguous contract terms. The arbitrator often resolves the dispute by applying trade usages, either to interpret the ambiguous terms or to determine what the given contract's terms really are. This recourse to trade usages does not create many problems on the domestic level. However, international arbitrations are far more complex and confusing. Trade Usages and Implied Terms in the Age of Arbitration provides a clear explanation of how usages, and more generally the implicit or implied content of international commercial contracts, are approached by some of the most influential legal systems in the world. Building on these approaches and taking account of arbitral practice, this book explores possible conceptual frameworks to help shape the emerging transnational law of trade usage. Part I covers the treatment and conceptual grounding of usages and implied terms in the positive law of influential jurisdictions. Part II defines the approach to usages and implied terms adopted in the design and implementation of important uniform law instruments dealing with international business contracts, as well as in the practice of international commercial arbitration. Part III concludes the book with an outline of what the conceptual grounding of trade usages could be in the transnational law of commercial contracts.

Sovereign states commonly use tax incentives in order to attract investment and capital from abroad. Although it has been recognized for many years that the forms and features of these incentives can often have harmful effects, there has not until now been a clear, in-depth, full-scale study of what these effects are, how they come about, and how they can be minimized or avoided. Within this volume, Carlo Pinto crystallises the extensive European and American literature in the field, locating his legal analysis in an EU law context that offers a framework within which tax lawyers in both government and business can find common ground. This volume builds an authoritative synthesis and proposal in its detailed discussions of all aspects of the theory and practice of tax competition, including the following: evidence of interjurisdictional tax competition in the US experience and what the EU can learn from it; methodologies to study tax competition; economic evidence of tax competition in Europe; Member States' "benchmark" tax systems; internal market distortion provisions of the EU Treaty (Articles 96 and 97) and relevant EMU provisions. It also examines the: applicability of state aid provisions (EC Treaty Article 87) to direct tax measures; the EU "Code of Conduct" Group; OECD countermeasures against harmful tax competition; and CFC legislation. In the course of his presentation the author analyses various tax regimes and court cases from most EU Member States, outlining the issues and clarifications each brings to the central questions. His final proposal demonstrates that the beneficial effects of tax competition - decrease in direct tax burden, improved efficiency in public administration, enhancement of employment and development - need not be fraught with the risk of fiscal degradation. This is a significant development in the success of the projected harmonisation of taxation in the European Union.

This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of creditor priority in European bank insolvency law. Following reform in the wake of the global financial crisis, EU law requires that Member States have in place bank-specific insolvency frameworks. Creditor priority-the order in which different creditors bear losses should a bank fail-differs substantially between bank-specific and general insolvency law. The bank-specific creditor priority framework aims to ensure that banks can enter insolvency proceedings without disrupting financial stability. The book provides a systematic and thorough account of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive and other EU legislation that governs creditor priority in bank resolution and liquidation proceedings, and their interaction with national law. The framework is analysed from several perspectives, including comparison with creditor priority in English, German and Norwegian general insolvency law. Moreover, the book places the evolution of the framework and its justifications within the broader post-crisis shifts in bank regulation, and critically examines the assumptions that underlie these developments. Finally, the book discusses how this area of law could evolve in the future.

Since the publication of the first edition in 2006, financial regulation around the world has changed dramatically as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis. As one of the world's leading financial centres, international regulatory reforms have had a significant impact on the legal and regulatory system in Hong Kong. This new second edition provides a comprehensive and authoritative single-volume guide to the main areas of financial regulation and financial law in Hong Kong. Given the massive changes in financial regulation globally and in Hong Kong, the second edition has been substantially rewritten and revised to address changes in markets and their legal and regulatory frameworks, as well as the implications of these changes to future market development. The book is in five parts: The first part considers the evolution of Hong Kong's role as a financial centre and the development of its financial regulatory structure, one that is perhaps unusually complex given the size of the jurisdiction. The second part discusses the regulation of the banking, securities, insurance sectors, including the regulatory powers of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC), the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI), and the forthcoming Independent Insurance Authority (IIA). The third part covers regulation of financial products and services, including securities offerings and listings, investment products and asset management, financial derivatives, and takeovers and mergers. The fourth part addresses market conduct and misconduct, including corporate governance, market abuse and financial crime. Finally, the fifth part examines the international context, focusing on the relationship between Hong Kong's financial markets and regulation and mainland China as well as key issues for Hong Kong's role as a major global financial centre.

Two of the distinguishing features of the law on foreign direct investment (FDI) are its complexity and its creativity. The law on FDI embraces the domestic rules and regulations dealing with foreign controlled business as well as the numerous bilateral and multilateral legal instruments. It is influenced by awards of international arbitration tribunals as well as numerous other sources, and thus undergoes permanent change. The various actors involved, including transnational corporations, investment promotion agencies, and multilateral donors, as well as lawyers advising foreign investors and financial intermediaries, each follow their own interests. By its nature, the FDI involves the interaction, and sometimes the clash, between different legal concepts of the participants and regulators. Counsels to local governments and domestic partners in a joint venture with foreign companies may not always be accustomed to legal documentation in an Anglo-American or continental European style. As a result, dealing with FDI requires a learning process for all the actors to understand and manage legal and business cultures. All this elucidates the need for a multi-author book which covers various areas of the law on FDI from different perspectives. This book undertakes a regulatory, policy and transactional approach both on the international and the domestic level. The authors of the book are all concerned with FDI as both academics and practitioners and come from a variety of legal, academic and geographical backgrounds. The book consists of three parts: first, a general introduction to FDI by Dr. Escher; next, an analysis of the emerging international law on FDI and related areas; and finally, an overview of FDI in a variety of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. This variety of perceptions and topics should provide the reader with useful insights into international transactional and domestic aspects of FDI.

This work explores the legal issues inherent in resolving troubled banking sectors in transitional economies. Bank failures are a recurrent phenomenon in both developed and developing countries, as shown by the crises in the last 10 years in the USA, Japan, Scandinavian countries, the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, South East Asia and Latin America. Banks in transitional economies face additional challenges as they become intermediaries in lending the publics's savings, rather than mere conduits for the central financing plan. They have to ensure repayment of loans when they no longer receive subsidies to compensate their losses to the same degree as before. As a result of these challenges, almost all these countries have suffered numerous bank failures in the past eight years, with negative consequences for bank owners, managers, depositors and other creditors. The absence, in many situations, of appropriate crisis management procedures and bank insolvency laws hinders the success or pace of the transition process.

Market and competition authorities operate in a complex environment with conflicting stakeholder demands. Balancing the various interests of the authority and stakeholder in an objective and impartial manner is strategic to achieving the goals of the legislation imposed. In a fresh approach examining the actions of an authority when a regulation is applied, Annetje Ottow argues the vital importance of the behaviour of authorities, focusing on five fundamental good agency principles: legality, independence, transparency, effectiveness, and responsibility, or, LITER. These principles provide agencies and those reviewing their actions with a framework for agency design and action. Combining theory and practice to provide insight into agencies' organization and behaviour, this book outlines and analyses behavioural issues using an ecosystemic method, addressing how independent agencies should be assessed, and which principles should apply. Using cases from the Netherlands and the UK, Ottow examines the key processes of authorities against the LITER principles, and opens the debate on 'how to regulate the agency'.

The book addresses the truly interdisciplinary and highly controversial subject of international financial regulation and supervision, which has been at the center of academic, political, and public attention since the start of the current economic and financial crisis. Drawing on international financial regulatory and supervisory experience and in line with the European Monetary Union's gradual transformation into a Genuine Economic and Monetary Union, it proposes the transformation of the European financial supervisory framework into a hybrid twin-peaks model to create the previously missing necessary legal foundation for the adoption of the so-called Group Support Regime (GSR). The latter is a relatively simple and transparent capital management tool for (re)insurance groups operating in a parent-subsidiary structure proposed by the European Commission under the new Solvency II insurance supervisory framework, which despite lengthy consideration was eventually rejected by Member States.

This book focuses on the enforcement of EU financial law on the national and supra-national levels. Emphasis is laid on the interaction between the EU and national levels (vertical interaction), as well as between the private, administrative, and criminal law levels (horizontal interaction). The book takes a multi-jurisdiction and inter-disciplinary approach and covers a range of issues that are highly topical, such as the new EU Anti-Money Laundering regime, and the ReNEUAL model for administrative law. Over the last few decades, EU financial law has grown exponentially. Virtually all these new rules and regulations require enforcement. However, the EU legislator generally has been reluctant to regulate enforcement at the national level, and often does not prescribe whether enforcement should take place through national criminal, administrative, or private law. This results in both practical and fundamental questions for the legal practitioner and the academic. This book addresses those questions. With contributions by leading academics and senior members of EU and national institutions, the book will be of interest to professionals dealing with financial law in their daily practice such as lawyers, bankers, policy makers, officers at supervisory authorities, and judges, but also for academics interested in fundamental questions of interaction between legal systems.

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 book covers organized crime groups, empirical studies of organized crime, criminal finances and money laundering, and crime prevention, gathering some of the most authoritative and well-known scholars in the field. The contributions to this book are new chapters written in honor of Professor Dick Hobbs, on the occasion of his retirement. They reflect his powerful influence on the study of organized crime, offering a novel perspective that located organized crime in its socio-economic context, studied through prolonged ethnographic engagement. Professor Hobbs has influenced a generation of criminology researchers engaged in studying organized crime groups, and this work provides a both a look back and this influence and directions for future research. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with a focus on organized crime and financial crime, as well as those interested in corruption, crime prevention, and applications of ethnographic methods.

Economics shapes environmental pricing theory, but the law translates theory into reality. This research review examines and discusses carefully selected classic and cutting edge articles from around the world that delve into the legal design features of environmental tax instruments, how governments define the legal authority to use environmental taxation, complex interactions with WTO law and the legal conundrums of border tax adjustments. These influential articles cover a wide range of environmental and legal issues that recur across continents, with carbon taxes and climate change taking centre stage as important case studies. This timely review is an essential resource for those working in the field, whether they are trained in law, economics, political science, environmental science or public finance.

This indispensible book offers step-by-step guidance to small and mid-sized companies and non-profit organizations in managing corruption risks in overseas markets. It covers how and why to build a culture of integrity, develop a risk-based anti-corruption compliance programme, and engage with other industry players in collective action against shared corruption challenges. The focus on culture, compliance and collective action helps resource-stretched companies to build a strong foundation for a healthy and flourishing organization, as well as contribute towards raising standards of integrity across their industry. Key features include: Guidance for creating and contributing to collective action Quick definitions, tips and practical tools such as checklists A hands-on approach with an emphasis on culture and leadership Case studies and real-life examples of both corruption risks and the importance of a strong compliance culture. Anti-Corruption Compliance will be an invaluable resource for senior managers of small and mid-sized organizations in minimizing exposure to corruption risks in international markets. It will also prove useful to corporate lawyers and others involved with compliance functions in larger companies, as well as to academics and students of corporate law with an interest in anti-corruption and compliance.

Registered investment advisers are accustomed to regulatory scrutiny. But the pressure to understand changing compliance regulations and to meet the requirements they impose has never been more intense. A range of scandals and abuses--from the laundering of terrorist funds to mutual fund trading shenanigans--has caused the Securities and Exchange Commission to tighten regulation and step up enforcement. Unfortunately, definitive compliance information--the kind that can save advisers precious time and spare them serious trouble--has not been easy to find. Until now.
"The RIA's Compliance Solution Book" gathers the information needed most and puts it all in one place. Here advisers will find plain-English translations of the rules that regulate such issues as: advisory contracts and feesadvertising and client communicationsRIA compliance programs and codes of ethicscustody of customer accountscompleting, filing, and amending Form ADVselecting brokers and executing trades

This research review selects fifty influential articles published over the past four decades on the regulation and governance of financial institutions. Some contribute by making theoretical advances that enhance the conceptual framework through which economists view financial institutions, and others contribute by assembling data and evaluating the predictions of these different models. The papers provide a foundation for understanding and conducting additional research into the regulation and governance of financial institutions.