The introduction of the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation into EU law provides a unique opportunity to obtain an in-depth understanding of repo markets. Based on the transaction-level data reported under the regulation, this paper presents an overview and key facts about the euro area...

Der Sammelband enthält die Schriftfassung der Vorträge zur Tagung »Elektronische Aktien«, die anlässlich des Gesetzgebungsverfahrens zum Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz am 15. Mai 2023 in der Hessischen Landesvertretung in Berlin stattfand.

The SEC’s efforts to standardize climate disclosure have revealed deep divides among the public and among corporate and securities law scholars about the proper scope and goals of climate disclosure reform. This controversy comes at a time when investor demand for ESG investment products is...

Since 1975, investment managers in the United States have been permitted to pay excess brokerage commissions on securities transactions and then utilize those excess payments—commonly known as “soft dollars”—to purchase research and related services, thereby subsidizing the investment...

I propose here the psychological attraction theory of financial regulation—that regulation is the result of psychological biases on the part of political participants—voters, politicians, bureaucrats, and media commentators; and of regulatory ideologies that exploit these biases. Some key...

We study the interplay between the redaction of information from regulatory filings and SEC monitoring of the redacting firms. We find that redactions are associated with more intense SEC monitoring, as evidenced by higher incidence of comment letters and a longer letter resolution process. Hand...

In addition to regulation of securities market issuers, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is also responsible for regulation of those entities that provide the networks, either electronic or physical, that enable the functioning of our securities markets. On February 9, 2022, the...

Regulation A (Reg A) offerings provide an alternative way for companies to raise capital from the public without undergoing the full registration and reporting requirements of a traditional initial public offering. To ensure that investors are fully informed about the investment opportunity, Reg...

Issuer choice proposals argue against mandatory securities regulation because market competition alone purportedly constrains exploitation of public investors in primary offerings. Other legal scholars support a mandatory regime. To date, empirical studies have been unable to resolve whether the...

Chapter 1: The principle of proportionality as an area of national discretion -- Chapter 2: Options and Discretions under the Capital Requirements Directive IV -- Chapter 3: The application of National Law by the ECB -- Chapter 4: The Corneli Case and the Application of National Law by the...

Mit der Verordnung über Märkte für Kryptowerte (MiCAR) und der Verordnung über eine Pilotregelung für auf der Distributed-Ledger-Technologie basierende Marktinfrastrukturen (DLT-Pilotregelung) hat die Europäische Union ein unionsweit einheitliches Regime zur Regulierung der Ausgabe von und...

The SEC has long taken a hands-off approach to private markets. Instead of direct regulation, the SEC has used investor access restrictions to create high-end contracting environments where investors (in theory) have the resources needed to fend for themselves. But in early 2022, this hands-off...

Decentralised finance (DeFi) represents an extremely interesting and continuously growing area of the financial sector. The present paper analyses varied types of digital platforms, expression of different degrees of decentralisation/disintermediation, focusing on capital raising ones since...

Despite the so-called “Crypto Winter” in the spring of 2022, which saw a deep plunge in global crypto markets, interest in the appropriate way to develop, use, and regulate cryptoassets and crypto-based businesses continues to be high. In the U.S., a Presidential Executive Order and multiple...

We examine the causal effect of increased oversight by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the cost of bank loans issued to U.S. cross-listed foreign firms, using the signing of the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) as a natural experiment. The MMoU enables the SEC...

Clearinghouses are systemic nodes in financial markets that handle trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions. Yet, these critical market infrastructures stand on fragile foundations. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010, the sweeping financial reform that followed the 2008 financial...

In 2022, the White House released a regulatory framework calling for a whole-of-government approach to digital asset innovations. Although justified and necessary, this systems-based strategy discounts the reality that U.S. financial regulation is fundamentally fragmented. There are signs of a...

Under SEC Rule 14a-8, shareholders have the right to petition management to include a topic for vote on the annual proxy statement. In response, management may request no-action relief from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff to exclude unwelcome proposals. Using a sample of 3,040...

For years, many shareholders—both institutional and individual investors—have pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to require public companies to disclose more information about the environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) risks facing the company. However,...

This is the second comment I filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on its proposal to require climate-change disclosures (Proposal). My first comment, filed on April 12, 2022, explains that the SEC lacks statutory authority to adopt the rules in the Proposal.The second comment gives...

European closing auction volumes increased heavily over the past years, in particular sincethe introduction of MiFID II in 2018. We show that this increase in closing auction volumesince 2018 is driven by an increase in limit order volume and that it contributes to moreefficient price formation....

The SEC released its long-awaited Climate Disclosure Proposal on March 21, 2022. The Proposal is expansive, the stakes are high, and, predictably, various critical arguments are being advanced in preparation for a potential court challenge. A close review of the Proposal, however, suggests that...

The article examines a peculiar legal dilemma—implicating securities law, legal ethics, and evidence law—that arises when litigation finance companies (LFCs) become public companies. LFCs provide funding to litigants and law firms for prosecuting lawsuits in exchange for a share of the...

We examine the effect of first official SEC announcement on April 12, 2021, regarding Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), which is an alternative mechanism of taking firms public. A prevailing opinion of academics, practitioners, and regulators alike, is that the primary appeal of the...

The SEC’s new GHG disclosure rule will likely lead to substantial economy-wide costs exceeding proposed benefits to investors. The reason is that, even though the SEC’s own cost estimate is substantial, it only focused on direct compliance costs of firms and ignored the costs accruing...

This comment letter, by a group of 22 professors of law and finance, expresses concern that the SEC’s recent proposal to impose extensive mandatory climate-related disclosure rules on public companies (the “Proposal”) exceeds the SEC’s authority. In addition, rather than provide...

This Comment Letter, signed by 30 securities law scholars, responds to the SEC’s request for comment on its March 2022 proposed rules for the “Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors” (the “Proposal”). The letter focuses on a single...

Market-wide circuit breakers (MWCBs), which halt trading for 15 minutes across all U.S. stock exchanges, were triggered four times in March 2020. We provide some of the first evidence on the effectiveness of MWCBs using tick data. Although MWCBs increase stocks’ realized volatility and quoted...

This comment letter, by a group of 22 professors of law and finance, expresses concern that the SEC’s recent proposal to impose extensive mandatory climate-related disclosure rules on public companies (the “Proposal”) exceeds the SEC’s authority. In addition, rather than provide...

As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considers appropriate “ESG” disclosure mandates, the Financial Economist’s Roundtable contributes to the debate with a statement summarizing its policy discussion. The FER believes financial regulators should limit mandates to matters that...

The following article adapts and consolidates two comment letters submitted last spring by a group of twenty-two professors of finance and law on the SEC’s proposed climate change disclosure rules. The professors reiterate their recommendation that the SEC withdraw its proposal as legally...

To debate at present whether public corporation Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting is important or necessary or whether it should be mandatory rather than voluntary is to engage with a past to which we cannot return. Our global climate crisis is real and intensifying, and for...

Since the adoption of the SEC's Rule 10b-21 in 1988, many researchers have been concerned over the effectiveness of short sales constraints in preventing manipulative trading in the derivatives market. We analyze whether options can be used as synthetic short sale instruments to manipulate stock...