When are banks fiduciaries of their customers and clients? This question is of more than theoretical interest given the organizational structure of modern financial institutions and the broad-ranging functions they perform. In this chapter of the Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law, I canvass...

The aim of this paper is to briefly present and assess the institutional framework governing the (and some main legal aspects related to the) European Banking Union (EBU), as in force, and the proposals made or suggested in order to enhance it. The paper is structured in three (3) Sections: (1)...

As broker-dealers, investment bankers must register with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) and comply with its rules, including the requirement to “observe high standards of commercial honor and just and equitable principles of trade.” As the self-regulatory body for...

Bank restructuring and sovereign-debt crises continue to be a heated topic of discussion. Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is, for example, openly challenging the deeply unpopular austerity policies underpinning the debt-stricken country's bailout program. Conventional wisdom in...

This essay, based on the author's presentation last September to the annual meeting of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA), addresses several issues related to Rule 506, the most widely-used of the SEC's transactional exemptions from federal registration of...

One of the most pressing questions in the aftermath of the financial crisis is how to deal with systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature on systemic risk and evaluate the regulation proposals in the Basel III framework...

The last financial crisis has shown that large banking crises not only pose a highly dangerous risk to financial systems, but also to both the real economy and public finances. Reducing that risk has become a priority for regulators and governments. Still, the debate is open on what the systemic...

The most recent episode of market turmoil exposed the limitations resulting from the traditional focus on too-big-to-fail institutions within an increasingly systemic-crisis-prone financial system, and encouraged the appearance of the too-connected-to-fail (TCTF) concept. The TCTF concept...

The macroprudential regulatory framework of Basel III imposes the same capital and liquidity requirements on all banks around the world to ensure global competitiveness of banks. Using an agent-based model of the financial system, we find that this is not a robust framework to achieve...

We study the stability of the banking system after a mortgage shock when a discretionary bailout policy is applied. Results suggest that the authority should be focused on preventing contagion. The decision over the appropriate policy depends upon the goal which the authority wants to pursue....