This book provides a detailed, yet simplified reference to the general principles of the Law of Contract and specific contracts, other commercial transactions and corporate law.

Fintech Law and Regulation: An African Perspective has come about in the context of the increasing call to adapt financial regulation to cater for fintech. The book aims to provide an African perspective on the regulatory and policy issues that fintech has given rise to. The book begins by examining the different aspects of fintech, followed by the development of fintech and its penetration in Africa. Later chapters consider pertinent regulatory and policy issues that have arisen with fintech. In the final chapter, the book highlights the many lessons which can be drawn from the various chapters and makes recommendations to overcome legal and regulatory gaps.

The global financial crisis of 2008 represented a tipping point in the interaction between financial services and technology – the period from then till now has been called the ‘age of fintech boom’. On a continent where fintech is not only ‘disrupting’, but possibly ‘erupting’ rapidly, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of policy and regulatory measures and sometimes the lack of legislation and other legal instruments to provide a sound legal and regulatory framework for fintech. The book suggests that additional research is needed on the practicalities of the drafting of policies, legislation and other regulatory instruments. Regional and continental regulatory coordination and cooperation must be strengthened if our continent is to realise the full potential and benefits of fintech.

What makes this book unique is that it is the first book to explore fintech law and regulation from an African perspective, instead of drawing lessons from Europe, the UK, USA, Canada, and so on. It is written by Africans trying to find regulatory and legal solutions, for Africa. This book will be a useful resource for fintech legal and regulatory scholars, postgraduate students, compliance officers, and regulators, to name a few.

The authors hope it will stir academic and policy discourse on the various issues surrounding fintech.

Principles of Market Abuse Regulation: A Comparative South African Perspective arguably offers the most comprehensive study of the regulation and enforcement of anti-market abuse laws in South Africa today. Accordingly, the book examines the regulation of the South African securities and financial markets to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the country's anti-market abuse laws. In this regard, the book provides that inadequate and inconsistent regulation of the securities and financial markets could give rise to low investor confidence, market volatility and poor market integrity. The author traces the regulation of market abuse under the Financial Markets Act 19 of 2012 and recommends measures that could enhance the combating of market abuse in the South African securities and financial markets. The Financial Sector Regulation Act 9 of 2017, which is set to expand the mandate of the Financial Services Board, is also considered. The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 provides context for the book. Events covered include South African and American international banks' collusion and market manipulation involving price-fixing, market allocation and rigging in the trading of foreign currency pairs of the South African rand since 2007.

The Global Financial Crisis has re-ordered how the EU intervenes in the EU financial market, both with respect to regulation and with respect to supervision. After 5 years of a behemoth reform agenda, the new landscape is now clear. Rule-making power has decisively moved to the EU and radical reforms have been made to the organization of supervision. EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation provides the first comprehensive, critical, and contextual account of the vast new rule-book which now applies to the EU financial market in the aftermath of the seismic reforms which have followed the financial crisis. Topics covered in-depth include the AIFMD, EMIR, the Short Selling Regulation, the new market abuse and transparency regimes, the rating agency regime, the UCITS IV-VI reforms, and MiFID II/MiFIR; the analysis is wide-reaching, extending to secondary legislation and relevant soft law. The book also examines the far-reaching institutional changes which have followed and considers in detail the role and impact of the European Securities and Markets Authority and the potential impact of the Single Supervisory Mechanism for euro area banks on the supervision of the EU financial market. EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation is the third edition of the highly successful and authoritative monograph first published as EC Securities Regulation. Almost entirely recast and re-written from the 2008 second edition to reflect the changes wrought by the Global Financial Crisis, it adopts the in-depth contextual and analytical approach of earlier editions and so considers the market, political, international, institutional, and constitutional context of the new regulatory and supervisory regime, and the underlying forces which have (and will continue to) shape it.

This comprehensive Practical Guide provides direction on the wide array of legal questions and challenges that start-ups face. Start-up Law features analysis from five jurisdictions that represent a variety of legal traditions across different continents. Expert contributors address key legal issues for technology-based start-ups and entrepreneurs, as well as providing insights into the law and practice of the countries examined. Key features include: * a focus on the complete life cycle of a start-up, from innovative idea through growth of the business to success or failure * specific, in-depth analysis of law relating to start-up businesses in Denmark, Canada, Israel, Switzerland and the United States * guidance aimed at helping start-ups and entrepreneurs navigate the diverse legal and regulatory hurdles they may encounter, including practical insights from expert contributors with first hand industry experience. Start-up Law will prove crucial reading for lawyers advising technology start-ups, as well as entrepreneurs themselves in this sector. It will also be useful for scholars and students in business and commercial law, as well as policy-makers interested in providing a supportive regulatory environment for innovation and start-ups.

This timely book provides a comprehensive overview of European pension law with a dual purpose: both to introduce the legal aspects of different forms of pension at the European level, as well as to explore the main legal policy issues. Throughout the book, the three main types of pension - state pension, occupational pension and personal pension - are examined, together with the issues of financing, institutions, solvency, stakeholders, and rights and duties. The book therefore provides a nuanced guide to the field, going beyond merely a paraphrase of European law or the case law of the European Court of Justice. Yves Stevens also outlines the main principles of European pension law, reflecting on them from historical, sociological and teleological points of view. The constant interaction between law, economics and social policy is the reference point for the legal debates at the heart of this book. Offering a unique insight into how the European bodies work to bring about pension legislation, EU Pension Law will be a key resource for scholars and students in the fields of financial regulation and economics, European law, finance law and social security law.

This book develops a conceptual framework that captures not only the tensions between constitutional values that are common to liberal democracies - human rights, democracy, and the rule of law - and the investment treaty regime, but also the potential for co-existence and complementarity. Contributions from leading experts in the field address how different systems of constitutional law interact with the investment treaty regime. Chapters provide a detailed overview of the various forms of interaction, and critically engage with the competing claims for supremacy that constitutional law and international investment law formulate. The book also addresses the reactions within the investment treaty regime to the demands formulated by constitutional law, in particular the use of constitutional analogies to understand international investment law and investor-state dispute settlement. Investigating the leading questions and issues surrounding this growing topic, this book will be an ideal read for students and scholars interested in financial, economic, and international law. Practitioners of constitutional law will also benefit from this innovative book.

This important and topical book provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges raised by blockchain from the perspective of public law. It considers the ways in which traditional categories of public law such as sovereignty, citizenship and territory are shaped, as well as the impact of blockchain technology on fundamental rights and democratic values. Articulated in two sections, the first analyses the opportunities and the challenges that blockchain and distributed ledger technologies raise in the field of public and constitutional law, while the second highlights challenges derived from the intersection between blockchain and other legal fields such as contract law, financial law and antitrust law. A wide variety of expert contributions offer further examinations of the constitutional challenges of blockchain technologies that provide regulatory options for governments and lawmakers. Blockchain and Public Law will be a critical point of reference for scholars and students of legal theory, public policy and governmental law. It will also be beneficial to legal practitioners and lawmakers to further develop their knowledge of the field of blockchain at national and international levels.

This timely book explores pertinent questions around the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU agencies'AEo soft law, with a particular focus on the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). It examines the variety of ESMA'AEos existing and newly granted soft law-making powers, which were intended to deal with the lack of effectiveness of its predecessor but are now called into question due to the 'AEohard'AEo effect of these soft laws. Built on a combination of theoretical analysis and first-hand practical experience, Marloes van Rijsbergen tests the framework for each category of ESMA'AEos soft law instruments at each stage of the policy cycle, demonstrating that the framework can be applied to other EU agencies with similar soft law-making powers. This unique framework assesses which procedural and institutional safeguards regarding EU agencies' soft law would reflect an adequate balancing of both legitimacy and effectiveness concerns. Comprehensive yet accessible, this book will be a key resource for students and scholars of EU financial law, constitutional law, public administration and governance. Providing an evaluation of the legal nature of ESMA'AEos soft law acts in the context of the financial sector, it will also prove valuable for practitioners, compliance officers and parties establishing other EU agencies.

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.

This book focuses on the building of a crypto economy as an alternative economic space and discusses how the crypto economy should be governed. The crypto economy is examined in its productive and financialised aspects, in order to distil the need for governance in this economic space. The author argues that it is imperative for regulatory policy to develop the economic governance of the blockchain-based business model, in order to facilitate economic mobilisation and wealth creation. The regulatory framework should cater for a new and unique enterprise organisational law and the fund-raising and financing of blockchain-based development projects. Such a regulatory framework is crucially enabling in nature and consistent with the tenets of regulatory capitalism. Further, the book acknowledges the rising importance of private monetary orders in the crypto economy and native payment systems that do not rely on conventional institutions for value transfer. A regulatory blueprint is proposed for governing such monetary orders as 'commons' governance. The rise of Decentralised Finance and other financial innovations in the crypto economy are also discussed, and the book suggests a framework for regulatory consideration in this dynamic landscape in order to meet a balance of public interest objectives and private interests. By setting out a reform agenda in relation to economic and financial governance in the crypto economy, this forward-looking work argues for the extension of 'regulatory capitalism' to this perceived 'wild west' of an alternative economic space. It advances the message that an innovative regulatory agenda is needed to account for the economically disruptive and technologically transformative developments brought about by the crypto economy.

The law of secured transactions has seen dramatic changes in the last decade. International organisations, particularly the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), have been working towards the creation of international legal standards aimed at the modernisation and harmonisation of secured financing laws (eg, the United Nations Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in International Trade, the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions and its Intellectual Property Supplement, the UNCITRAL Guide on the Implementation of a Security Rights Registry and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions). The overall theme of this book is international (or cross-border) secured transactions law. It assembles contributions from some of the most authoritative academic voices on secured financing law. This publication will be of interest to those involved in secured transactions around the world, including policy-makers, practitioners, judges, arbitrators and academics.

The maintenance of financial stability is a key objective of monetary policy, but the record of regulators in achieving this has been lamentable in recent years. This failure has been matched by an equivalent inability to establish an appropriate theoretical basis for financial regulation. In this book, the authors demonstrate how to enhance the theory, modeling and practice of such regulation. The main determinant of financial instability is the default of financial institutions. The authors highlight the importance of the appropriate incorporation of default into macro-financial models and its interaction with liquidity. Besides covering the historical development and current stance of financial regulation, the book includes a number of policy-oriented chapters revealing how the authors' modeling approach can improve the process. This authoritative book will serve as a basis for future work on financial stability management for both academics and policy makers and provide guidance on how to undertake crisis prevention and resolution.

The achievement of financial stability is one of the most pressing issues today. This timely and innovative book provides an analytical framework to assess financial (in)stability as an equilibrium phenomenon compatible with the orderly functioning of a modern market economy. The authors expertly show how good regulatory policy can be implemented and that its effects on the real as well as the nominal side of the economy can be properly analyzed. The core of their approach is to take realistic account of the interaction between endogenous default, agent heterogeneity and money and liquidity, and suggest how a quantifiable metric of financial fragility could be developed. This insightful book will serve as a basis for future work on financial stability management for both academics and policy makers and provide guidance on how to undertake crisis prevention and resolution.

"The richness, clarity and nuances of the structure and methodology followed by the contributors make the book a very valuable tool for students... seeking to obtain a general understanding of the market and how it is regulated." - Ligia Catherine Arias Barrera, Banking & Finance Law Review The fully updated edition of this user-friendly textbook continues to systematise the European law governing capital markets and examines the underlying concepts from a broadly interdisciplinary perspective. The 3rd edition deals with 3 central developments: the project of the capital markets union; sustainable finance; and the further digitalisation of financial instruments and securities markets. The 1st chapter deals with the foundations of capital markets law in Europe, the 2nd explains the basics, and the 3rd examines the regime on market abuse. Chapter 4 explores the disclosure system and chapter 5 short-selling and high-frequency trading. The role of intermediaries, such as financial analysts, rating agencies, and proxy advisers, is described in chapter 6. Chapter 7 explains compliance and corporate governance in investment firms and chapter 8 illustrates the regulation of benchmarks. Finally, chapter 9 deals with public takeovers. Throughout the book emphasis is placed on legal practice, and frequent reference is made to the key decisions of supervisory authorities and courts. This is essential reading for students involved in the study of capital markets law and financial law.

Small jurisdictions have become significant players in cross-border corporate and financial services. Their nature, legal status, and market roles, however, remain under-theorized. Lacking a sufficiently nuanced framework to describe their functions in cross-border finance - and the peculiar strengths of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - it remains impossible to evaluate their impacts in a comprehensive manner. This book advances a new conceptual framework to refine the analysis and direct it toward more productive inquiries. Bruner canvasses extant theoretical frameworks used to describe and evaluate the roles of small jurisdictions in cross-border finance. He then proposes a new concept that better captures the characteristics, competitive strategies, and market roles of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - the "market-dominant small jurisdiction" (MDSJ). Bruner identifies the central features giving rise to such jurisdictions' competitive strengths - some reflect historical, cultural, and geographic circumstances, while others reflect development strategies pursued in light of those circumstances. Through this lens, he evaluates a range of small jurisdictions that have achieved global dominance in specialized areas of cross-border finance, including Bermuda, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Delaware. Bruner further tests the MDSJ concept's explanatory power through a broader comparative analysis, and he concludes that the MDSJs' significance will likely continue to grow - as will the need for a more effective means of theorizing their roles in cross-border finance and the global dynamics generated by their ascendance.