This comprehensive Commentary examines the implications of the EU’s Market Abuse Regulation, introduced following the 2008 financial crisis after gaps were identified in the existing regulatory framework. It explores whether and how the Regulation achieves its aims of preserving the integrity of financial markets by preventing insider dealing and market manipulation, providing a harmonised legal framework, and increasing legal certainty for all market participants.
Market Abuse Regulation is a wide-ranging and insightful analysis of the market abuse regime and the applications of the regulations in the UK and European Union. It provides detailed discussion of the implementation and interpretation of the regulation, the conduct of investigations, the defences and appeals available against a finding of market abuse, and overlapping United States regulation. The new edition explains and evaluates the changes introduced by the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, the Market Abuse Directive, the Market Abuse Regulation, and the implementation of the Regulation on Wholesale Market Integrity and Transparency, which have resulted in dramatic expansion of the coverage of EU market abuse regulation. It addresses the regulation of additional financial instruments, the expansion to include new markets and trading facilities, and changes to the coverage of commodity derivatives and physical commodities. It discusses the dramatic changes to the format of regulation as a result of the restructuring of UK regulators; as well as the addition of new EU supervisory bodies with revised powers over national regulation within the EU. Beyond the EU, it discusses international protocols and treaties which have also added to the regulatory structure.
The European Union regime for fighting market manipulation and insider trading – commonly referred to as market abuse – was significantly reshuffled in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 and new legal instruments to fight market abuse were eventually adopted in 2014. In this monograph the authors identify the association between the financial crisis and market abuse, critically consider the legislative, policy and enforcement responses in the European Union, and contrast them with the approaches adopted by the United States of America and the United Kingdom respectively. The aftermath of the financial crisis, ongoing security concerns and increased legislation and policy responses to the fight against irregularities and market failures demonstrate that we need to understand, in context, the regulatory responses taken in this area. Specifically, the book investigates how the regulatory responses have changed over time since the start of the financial crisis. Market Manipulation and Insider Trading places the fight against market abuse in the broader framework of the fight against white collar crime and also considers some associated questions in order to better understand the contemporary market abuse regime.
The Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) entered into force in 2016 within the European Union, which introduced a fully harmonized ban on market manipulation. Even though the regulation is quite detailed, the terms used to define market manipulation are relatively vague and open-ended. In What Is market manipulation? Dr. Andri Fannar Bergþórsson offers unique insight to and an interpretation of the concept of market manipulation, which includes an analysis of case law from the Nordic countries. The aim of the book is to clarify the concept as described in MAR and to provide readers some guidelines to distinguish between lawful behaviour and market manipulation (the unlawful behaviour). Bergþórsson convincingly argues that misinformation is an essential element of all forms of market manipulation.
This book analyses the European market abuse regime contained in the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and related directives and regulations. Written by leading scholars in the field of capital market law from a number of European jurisdictions, the book is divided into two main parts. The first consists of chapters considering relevant issues by topic; whilst the second provides the first article-by-article commentary on the Regulation, with a detailed and technical analysis of its terms. In the first part guidance is arranged by topic and includes aspects not directly addressed by MAR such as enforcement, and the impact of US securities regulation. As well as considering the sources of market abuse regulation in general, this first part also examines its theoretical and economic framework in order to provide better understanding of the Regulation itself.
Economic theory indicates that financial markets play a prominent role to the efficient allocation of resources in the modern world. Financial markets can fulfil this role if they enjoy the confidence of investors and are free of abuse. The financial frauds associated with the collapse of Enron and the major crises in world leading corporations such as WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, and the 'Wall Street financial scandals' have shown that fraud, manipulation, and insider dealing retain a catastrophic presence in modern financial markets. Proper deterrence of market abuse is necessary not only for the effective operation of modern financial markets, but also for regaining investor confidence. This book analyses the mechanics and regulation of two of the most harmful market practices in the modern financial world: insider dealing and market manipulation, which together comprise the offence of market abuse. Avgouleas examines the UK and EC regimes from an interdisciplinary perspective, also making extensive and critical use of US case law. He emphasizes the economic analysis of anti-fraud manipulation regulations and their effects upon market welfare and explores the possible deterrent benefits of civil law remedies.
Over the decade or so since the global financial crisis rocked EU financial markets and led to wide-ranging reforms, EU securities and financial markets regulation has continued to evolve. The legislative framework has been refined and administrative rulemaking has expanded. Alongside, the Capital Markets Union agenda has developed, the UK has left the EU, and ESMA has emerged as a decisive influence on EU financial markets governance. All these developments, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, have shaped the regulatory landscape and how supervision is organized. EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation provides a comprehensive, critical, and contextual account of the intricate rulebook that governs EU financial markets and its supporting institutional arrangements. It is framed by an assessment of how the regime has evolved over the decade or so since the global financial crisis and considers, among other matters, the post-crisis reforms to key legislative measures, the massive expansion of administrative rulemaking and of soft law, the Capital Markets Union agenda, the development of supervisory convergence as the means for organizing pan-EU supervision, and ESMA's role in EU financial markets governance. Its coverage extends from capital-raising and the Prospectus Regulation to financial market intermediation and the MiFID II/MiFIR and IFD/IFR regimes, to the new regulatory regimes adopted since the global financial crisis (including for benchmarks and their administrators), to retail market regulation and the PRIIPs Regulation, and on to the EU's third country regime and the implications of the UK's departure from the EU. This is the fourth edition of the highly successful and authoritative monograph first published as EC Securities Regulation. Heavily revised from the third edition to reflect developments since the global financial crisis, it adopts the in-depth contextual and analytical approach of earlier editions and so considers the market, political, institutional, and international context of the regulatory and supervisory regime.
How can the concept of abuse of European Union law – which can be defined as undesirable choice of law artificially made by a private citizen – generate so much disagreement among equally intelligent individuals? Seeking to transcend the classical debate between its supporters and adversaries, the present study submits that the concept of abuse of EU law is located on three major fault-lines of EU law, which accounts for the well-established controversies in the field. The first fault-line, which is common to all legal orders, opposes legal congruence (the tendency to yield equitable legal outcomes) to legal certainty (the tendency to yield predictable legal outcomes). Partisans of legal congruence tend to advocate the prohibition of abuses of law, whereas partisans of legal certainty tend to oppose it. The second fault-line is specific to EU law and divides two conceptions of the regulation of the internal market. If economic integration is conceived as the promotion of cross-border competition among private businesses (the paradigm of 'regulatory neutrality'), choices of law must be proscribed as abusive, for they distort business competition. But if economic integration is intended to promote competition among Member States (the paradigm of 'regulatory competition'), choices of law by EU citizens represent a desirable process of arbitrage among national laws. The third and final fault-line corresponds to the tension between two orientations of the economic constitution of the European Union, namely the fear of private power and the fear of public power. Those who fear private power most tend to endorse the prohibition of abuses of law, whereas those who fear public power most tend to reject it. Seen in this way, the concept of abuse of EU law offers a forum in which fundamental questions about the nature and function of EU law can be confronted and examined in a new light. In May 2013, the thesis that this book was based on won the First Edition of the European Law Faculties Association Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis.
Analyses governance structures for international finance, evaluates current regulatory reforms and proposes a new governance system for global financial markets.
The rise of Fintech and crypto-assets in the payments sector presents new opportunities and challenges for firms, regulators and policymakers, and the law is continually changing to keep pace with these developments. This book provides an overview and practical examination of key areas of payments law and regulation in the EU and UK, as well as introductions to analogous legal regimes in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore and sub-Saharan Africa.
