Institute for Law and Finance Series

Where might the next systemic financial crisis come from? And how do we achieve financial stability in a poly crisis world? This book addresses macroeconomic factors, crypto assets, non-bank financial institutions and regulated financial service providers, keeping in mind that each sector can interact with the others to produce a cluster of risks with compounding effects.

This volume contains a "best of" the renowned conference series ECLE – Economy, Criminal Law, Ethics, updated with an introduction. It is dedicated to the memory of the cofounder and spiritus rector of the series, Prof. Dr. Klaus Lüderssen, who died in 2016. His central texts introduce each chapter in this book. In 2022, he would have celebrated his 90th birthday.

What is the future of banking and money? The road passes through data and digitalization at all levels of activity, from personal banking through publicly and privately issued digital currencies. But who is winning and losing ground in the banking sector? Do we really need central bank digital currencies and how should they and private digital currencies be designed and regulated to yield the maximum benefits while reducing the obvious dangers? How should we regulate the new digital technologies? This book´brings you the answers of senior public sector officials, industry leaders and leading academics. It is the tenth title in the Institute for Law and Finance’s series on the future of the financial sector.

The books deals with the questions that really matter for green finance: Where will the money to finance the transition to a low carbon environment come from, how far do the banks’ balance sheets stretch and where will the rest of the money come from? How much can we rely on the capital markets, especially in the EU, to get money to the parts of the economy which really need it, without greenwashing? How do governments organize not just a transition, but a just transition to a low carbon environment? Is it time to revisit received ideas about the proper role for central
banks?

Why does the third leg of the European Banking Union, EDIS, remain mired in controversy? This book presents the views of senior representatives of the public and private sectors and academia on why EDIS is either necessary, counter-productive or even dangerous. No viewpoint has been excluded and the full range of issues involved is covered, including the impact on financial stability and on consolidation of the financial sector in Europe, progress on reducing NPLs, the feasibility of developing "safe bonds" and other, more practical solutions to the "doom loop" and the actual design of EDIS.

The work draws conclusions of the fourth conference in a series on the subject of "too big to fail", hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main on April 23, 2018. It presents the views of key European Union officials as well as senior executives from the financial sector on where Europe stands in this crucial area.

On December 7, 2017, final agreement was reached on the long-awaited revised bank capital rules known as Basel III. This volume presents the findings of day long symposium hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance on January 29, 2018, dedicated to explaining what has actually been accomplished, what has been left out and what it all means for financial institutions, investors and the public interest.

This volume is a collection of articles based upon presentations given on November 23, 2015 at a conference hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance entitled "Towards a New Age of Responsibility in Banking and Finance: Getting the Culture and the Ethics Right" which brought together leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the importance of culture and ethics in restoring public trust in financial institutions.

The volume includes lectures and discussions from the 8^th Symposium on Economy, Criminal Law, Ethics held at the Institute for Law and Finance. The symposium focused on the undetermined factual criteria that are often a feature of commercial criminal law. Based on considerations of comparative law and economics, the participants asked: Does criminal commercial law make deliberate use of such indeterminacy with an eye toward its symbolic effects?

The contributions to the 7^th ECLE Symposium mainly focus on the problem of abstract risk for offenses in commercial criminal cases, discussing both principle and particulars. A special focus is placed on considering victim joint responsibility as well as investment advice and excessive risk assumption. The volume concludes with a discussion of the proposal to institute a corporate criminal act.

In March 2015, the Institute for Law and Finance in Frankfurt am Main held a full-day symposium which brought together leading representatives of the public and private sectors to deliver the first high level response to the questions posed by the Commission’s Green Paper on Building a Capital Markets Union. These responses are collected in this volume.

The volume is a collection of articles based on presentations given at a conference titled “Too Big to Fail III: Structural Reform Proposals – Should We Break Up the Banks ?” hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance on January 21, 2014 – the third session of a series on the topic “too big to fail” with the previous conferences “Too Big to Fail – Brauchen wir ein Sonderinsolvenzrecht für Banken” and “The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive”.

“Economy, Criminal Law, Ethics” (ECLE), engaged in an examination of corporate criminal responsibility, the general good in commercial criminal law, and the notion of corporate culture. Discussions focused on exemplary situations such as the separate banking law and criminal penalties for insider trading. The discussions concentrated on specific problem areas, such as internal investigations and selected constellations that lead to corruption.

Die Strafverfolgung erfolgt im Interesse der Öffentlichkeit, wobei diese mittlerweile durch das Gemeinwohl repräsentiert wird. Der Tagungsband beschäftigt sich mit diesem Begriff speziell im Wirtschaftsstrafrecht. Die Beiträge verorten den politisch-gesellschaftlichen Rahmen und klären ökonomische, europa- und verfassungsrechtliche Fragen. Beleuchtet werden das Gemeinwohl im materiellen Recht und der Gemeinwohlbezug einzelner Wirtschaftsdelikte.

The volume is a collection of articles based on presentations given at a conference titled “The Crisis Management Directive – Europe’s Answer for Too Big to Fail?” hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance on May 3, 2012.

The volume contains articles based on presentations given at a conference hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance of Goethe University on October 27, 2011. Collective action clauses are an example of the typical dichotomy of financial regulation: While the problems are economic in nature, the solutions need to be implemented by law. The Institute for Law and Finance strives to bring together law and finance in order to foster a better mutual understanding of both disciplines and to improve the regulation of financial markets. Thus, the organizers are particularly pleased that eminent experts from the fields of law and finance agreed to participate in the event and to share their views on and experiences with collective action clauses. The presentations given at the conference have been updated in 2012 to reflect recent developments.

The new German Bond Act has yet to prove itself in practice. As part of a half-day conference, prominent specialists from academia and practice shared their opinions about current problems arising from the new bond legislation. This volume of the conference proceedings documents and archives the delivered presentations. The authors present their views on how to proceed with managing the legal problems that have arisen to date. Similarly, they offer reform suggestions for strengthening Germany’s position in the international competition between legal systems.

This volume from the “Institute for Law and Finance Series” (ILFS) brings together the presentations from the ILF conference “Too Big To Fail - Do we need a special insolvency law for banks?” (5 November 2010, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main). Following an introduction to the topic, the question is posed: should a special insolvency law for banks be introduced? In this context, existing approaches are critically examined such as the German Bank Restructuring Act. In addition to addressing the topics: the reasons for and instruments of bank insolvency proceedings, part of this book is dedicated to examining the protection of creditors. The conference proceedings include German and English language presentations.

This book is a collection of presentations held at the third symposium of the project “Economy, Criminal Law, Ethics”.
The presentations in the first section of this work clearly show how the goals pursued in the financial market compete with other economic duties and that now new coordinating mechanisms must be developed.
This is demonstrated in a focused and compact manner in the following section, which contains presentations on selected topics regarding substantive law and procedural law. The symposium concludes with a re-examination of the basics and considers possible regulatory and monitoring reforms. In forward looking discussions, hidden methodological controversies are explored, the realization of which facilitates the understanding of complex processes.

The 2nd Symposium on Economy, Criminal Law, Ethics (ECLE) was held at the ILF on 20 and 21 November 2009 on the topic "Die Finanzkrise, das Wirtschaftstrafrecht und die Moral" where current issues in this field were discussed by prominent speakers.

This conference transcript discusses the far-reaching and intense controversies surrounding current company law and economic matters affecting the fundamental questions of the State economic constitution and aims to re-evaluate the significance of the state regulations. Legally, the goal includes further reforms of company law, continuance of the rules of corporate governance and also, new interpretations of relevant constitutional law regulations. Organizationally, the field of focus is the economic surveillance by government bodies and the establishment or further development of compliance department in companies.

On 9 November 2005 a symposium took place on the realisation of the Takeover Directive in Europe which was attended by experts on takeover law from six Member States. Their papers are compiled in this volume.

This volume contains the contributions from the convention “The Future of Clearing and Settlement”, which the ILF staged on June 27, 2005, at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. The first part of the convention was devoted to selected questions about deposit and company law regarding securities safekeeping in the media, including possible alternatives to the applicable law and a comparative law look at Switzerland. At the same time, the analysis of the legal foundation for clearing and settlement offered the opportunity to put the market models for securities settlement, which are actively discussed at present, to the test in the second part of the convention.

["The reform of the law on bonds"]
In the past few years, the financing instrument "bonds" was gaining considerable importance on the German capital market, not least because of declining prices on the share market and the lowering of key interest rates by the ECB. On an international level, the German bond market comes in third world-wide behind the American and Japanese markets.

The German law on bonds, however, is less popular than the German market. The prevailing German law on bonds is largely codified in the 1899 law on common rights of bond owners. The age of a law is certainly no indication of its quality. However, the law on bonds, particularly, does not meet the practical requirements of a great number of issues and is therefore hardly ever applied. In this respect, Germany is definitely posed to fall behind in the competition between the legal systems.

The present volume includes the lectures of a conference on reforming the law on bonds organized by the ILF on 5 February 2004. The Federal government's plan to completely revise the law on bonds was the impetus for this conference. The present contributions aim at being part of the reform discussion and provide suggestions for organizing the future law from the point of view of both the German practice and the foreign legal systems that are most important with respect to bonds.

[The European Stock Corporation. Implementation questions and perspectives]

In October 2004 the European stock corporation, or Societas Europaea (S.E.), has been made available in the EU as a European form of company. The discussion concerning a European stock corporation harks back to the 1950's. Then, in 2001, a surprising accord was reached after various failed attempts to establish a standard European stock corporation.

However, in many partially decisive areas this accord was only able to be reached through extensive compromises. That's why it's feared that there will not be a standard form of stock corporation, but rather a multitude of nationally characterized and partially quite different European stock corporations.

The conference arranged by the "foundational guest lecture series for international banking law" should provide insights from a comparative legal standpoint into the status and content of the implementation efforts in the relevant member nations of the EU. The volume at hand reproduces the lectures held at the conference.

The number of hedge funds and the assets they have under management has increased in recent years. This increase became significantly more pronounced after the market downturn in 2001. Hedge funds can help investors to benefit from volatile and even sinking stock markets. However, despite the prominent use of the word "hedge" in their name, such funds rarely offer a safe hedge against risk, given that they depend heavily on skill-based investment techniques and often invest in highly speculative financial instruments. Nevertheless, such funds received no specific treatment in the legislation of such major markets as Germany and the United States for years.

Against the backdrop of international regulatory concern for hedge funds, the Institute for Law and Finance (ILF), in cooperation with Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V. (DAI), brought together leading scholars, lawyers and bankers, to assess the risks, opportunities and regulatory challenges that hedge funds present. At the time of the conference, German lawmakers were still discussing the need and possible content of a new law. The fruit of their discussions was the German Investment-Modernization Act (Investmentmodernisierungsgesetz), which entered into force on January 1, 2004, and increased the attractiveness of offering hedge fund products in the German market.

This inaugural volume of the Institute for Law and Finance Series contains the proceedings of the ILF/DAI May 2003 conference entitled "Hedge Funds: Risks and Regulation", and presents papers discussing the economic characteristics of and regulatory strategies for addressing hedge funds. The first two papers examine hedge funds from an economic perspective. Alexander M. Ineichen, Managing Director and Global Head of AIS Research at UBS, reveals the economic reality of hedge funds from the myths that has surrounded them. Then Franklin R. Edwards, Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Futures Markets of the Columbia Business School in New York explains how the regulation of hedge funds should be tailored to their core economic reality and the goals of financial stability and investor protection. Next, Marcia L. MacHarg, a partner of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, Ashley Kovas, a Manager in the Business Standards Department of the Financial Services Authority, London, and Edgar Wallach, a partner of Hengeler Mueller, present the state of the relevant regulatory structures in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, respectively. The book then closes with an analysis of corporate structures used for German hedge funds, offered by Kai-Uwe Steck, a member of the German Asset Management practice group of Shearman & Sterling LLP.

We examine the causes and consequences of bank disintermediation. Are the causes regulation or competition from non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs)? Or are banks now cooperating with NBFIs, and does the greater risk of competition for them come from retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)? Can the EU’s Savings and Investment Union (SIU) be a game changer for them? And what effects may bank disintermediation have on central bank monetary policy transmission?