This book was first published in 2009. Clearing forms the core part of a smooth and efficiently functioning financial market infrastructure. Traditionally, it has been provided by clearing houses, most of which today act as a 'central counterparty' (CCP) between the two sides of a trade. The rapid growth of cross-border trading has sparked discussion on the most efficient industry structure - particularly in Europe and the US. At the heart of this discussion lies the question of whether the implementation of a single clearing house creates greater benefits than a more competitive but interlinked market structure. This is the starting point for this book, which analyses the efficiency of clearing and clearing industry structure. Along with clear-cut definitions and a concise characterisation and descriptive analysis of the clearing industry, the book determines the efficiency impact of various cross-border integration and harmonisation initiatives between CCPs. This serves to identify the most preferable future structure for the clearing industry.

Modern financial systems rely on robust infrastructures to support efficient and resilient markets. Trading venues, clearinghouses, securities depositories, and trade repositories are the building blocks of the financial market architecture. Financial market infrastructures (FMIs) have been central in the post-crisis reform of global and domestic financial markets, with lawmakers closely regulating FMIs in the aftermath of the financial crisis. This book systematically analyses the current regulatory landscape of FMIs, specifically in the areas of trading and post-trading services in financial instruments. The legal regime for FMIs is complex due to the many relevant regulations and implementing measures. The comprehensive and cross-border approach of this book, covering both the EU and the US regimes, supports lawyers in understanding the law relevant to each step of a securities and financial transaction. The dual perspective taken in the book, covering both transactional and institutional aspects, deepens that understanding further. The volume is organized in three main parts introduced by a general discussion on the economic and legal evolution of FMIs. Parts I and II address trading and post-trading infrastructures and services in the securities and derivatives markets. Part III explains contemporary issues and challenges observable across a wide range of activities in both trading and post-trading services. Financial Market Infrastructures fills a void in the literature on FMIs, providing a comprehensive source of reference to the legal and regulatory framework. Trading venues and post-trading services in financial instruments are critical for the modern financial markets, and their economic and systemic relevance is fully analysed in this new work creating a valuable reference source for legal practitioners and scholars working in financial regulation.

This 2005 text explores the implications of a bargaining perspective for institutional governance and public law in deregulated industries such as electric power and telecommunications. Leading media accounts blame deregulated markets for failures in competitive restructuring policies. However, the author argues that governmental institutions, often influenced by private stakeholders, share blame for the defects in deregulated markets. The first part of the book explores the minimal role that judicial intervention played for much of the twentieth century in public utility industries and how deregulation presents fresh opportunities and challenges for public law. The second part of the book explores the role of public law in a deregulatory environment, focusing on the positive and negative incentives it creates for the behavior of private stakeholders and public institutions in a bargaining-focused political process.

The Obama administration aims to lay a sound foundation for growth by investing in high-speed rail, clean energy, information technology, drinking water, and other vital infrastructures. The idea is to partner with the private sector to produce these public goods. An Obama government bank will direct these investments, making project decisions based on the merits of each project, not on politics. This approach has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for several decades. In fact, our government-led reinvestment in America is modeled explicitly on international public banks and partnerships. However, although this foreign commercial policy is well-established with many successes, it has also been deservedly controversial and divisive. This book describes the international experience, drawing lessons on how the Obama Bank can forge partnerships to promote a durable twenty-first-century New Deal.

In recent years financial conglomerates have been established throughout Europe. This horizontal diversification has attracted a great deal of attention in the banking and insurance sector, and has alarmed the supervisory authorities and the European Commission. Financial Conglomerates: New Rules for New Players? gives a broad, innovative survey of the following aspects: it analyzes different sets of definitions of financial conglomerates, groups, consolidation criteria, etc., testing the practical effects of these definitions on the basis of a detailed relational database; although the benefits of financial conglomerates are straightforward, it is clear that quite a number of potential risks cannot be ignored; moreover, the differences in regulation of the solvency requirements for banks, insurance companies and investment firms are analyzed in order to look for a possible approach for calculating the necessary level of solvency for financial conglomerates. Audience: Required reading for practitioners as well as academic researchers in both the financial and the insurance markets. Strategic as well as regulatory perspectives are relevant disciplines.

In this updated edition, author Nicola Jentzsch provides an in-depth analysis of the economics and regulation of financial privacy. You get a comparative overview of credit reporting systems in the US and in the 27 member states of the European Union. This is the "most in-depth study of the history and economics of credit reporting to date," according to David Medine, former Associate Director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Challenges facing central bankers are expertly examined and analyzed. The book explores monetary policy and financial crisis as well as insolvency, collective action clauses, international mediation, and management of central banks. The author has worked as an economist at the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements and as an international mediator for the Secretariat of the G10 Ministers and Governors.

This book was first published in 2006. It is estimated that up to sixty percent of the world's money may be located offshore, where half of all financial transactions are said to take place; however, there is a perception that secrecy about offshore is encouraged to obfuscate tax evasion and money laundering. McCann provides a detailed analysis of the global offshore environment, outlining the extent of the information available and how that information might be used in assessing the quality of individual jurisdictions, as well as examining whether some of the perceptions about 'offshore' are valid. He analyses the ongoing work of the Financial Stability Forum, the Financial Action Task Force, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The book also offers some suggestions as to what the future might hold for offshore finance.

As governments around the world withdraw from welfare provision and promote long-term savings by households through the financial markets, the protection of retail investors has become critically important. Taking as a case study the wide-ranging EC investor-protection regime which now governs EC retail markets after an intense reform period, this critical, contextual and comparative examination of the nature of investor protection explores why the retail investor should be protected, whether retail investor engagement with the markets should be encouraged and how investor protection laws should be designed, particularly in light of the financial crisis. The book considers the implications of the EC's investor protection rules 'on the books' but also considers investor protection law and policy 'in action', drawing on experience from the UK retail market and in particular the Financial Services Authority's extensive retail market activities, including the recent Retail Distribution Review and the Treating Customers Fairly strategy.

Recent years have seen an explosive increase in investor-state disputes resolved in international arbitration. This is significant not only in terms of the number of disputes that have arisen and the number of states that have been involved, but also in terms of the novel types of dispute that have emerged. Traditionally, investor-state disputes resulted from straightforward incidences of nationalisation or breach of contract. In contrast, modern disputes frequently revolve around government measures taken to further public policy goals, such as the protection of the environment. This book explores the outcomes of several investor-state disputes over environmental policy. In addition to examining the pleadings of parties and decisions of arbitral tribunals in disputes that have been resolved in arbitration, the influence that investment arbitration has had in negotiated outcomes to conflicts is also explored.

Clearing forms the core part of a smooth and efficiently functioning financial market infrastructure. Traditionally, it has been provided by clearing houses, most of which today act as a 'central counterparty' (CCP) between the two sides of a trade. The rapid growth of cross-border trading has sparked discussion on the most efficient industry structure - particularly in Europe and the US. At the heart of this discussion lies the question of whether the implementation of a single clearing house creates greater benefits than a more competitive but interlinked market structure. This is the starting point for this book, which analyses the efficiency of clearing and clearing industry structure. Along with clear-cut definitions and a concise characterisation and descriptive analysis of the clearing industry, the book determines the efficiency impact of various cross-border integration and harmonisation initiatives between CCPs. This serves to identify the most preferable future structure for the clearing industry.

Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to explore the problems of budget policy. The authors, including top economists, political scientists, historians, psychologists, and legal scholars, together provide a unique, multidisciplinary introduction to the subject. In addition to in-depth analysis of congressional budget procedures and the economics of federal deficits and debt, Fiscal Challenges explores important recent developments in budget policy at the state level and in the European Union. The goal of the volume is to offer readers wide-ranging perspectives on the many different academic disciplines and perspectives that bear on the evaluation of budgetary procedures and their reform.