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Banking and Finance Law

Institute of International Financial Law

Members

The Institute of International Financial Law promotes teaching and research in banking and financial law and regulation at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS). Its faculty comprises some of the field's leading experts, including four full-time professors, Professor Rosa M Lastra, Professor Philip John Rawlings, Professor Takis Tridimas and Professor George Walker, Dr Gabriel Gari, senior lecturer and one lecturer, Dr Costanza Russo. In addition, Dr Rafael Leal-Arcas, senior lecturer, is involved with the European and International Economic Law aspects related to the activities of the European Banking and Finance group. Dr Leon Vinokur, jointly appointed as a lecturer in School of Economics and Finance and the CCLS, is programme director of the MSc in Law and Finance. Dr Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal has recently been jointly appointed by the School of Economics and Finance and the CCLS as lecturer and programme director of the new LLM in Law and Economics (which starts in September 2012).

The Institute of International Financial Law/the European Banking and Finance (EBF) group at CCLS, facilitates academic collaboration within the University of London academic community and maintains links with institutions in Europe, Asia and North America, including the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson College of Law, the University of Zurich Rechtswissenschaftlichen Institut, Brooklyn Law School, the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy, University of Cambridge, the University of Stockholm and the University of Texas.

Teaching and Education

Modules offered by faculty members in this field to the main LLM programmes, Msc in Law and Finance, the Diplomas programme and the new LLM in Law and Economics include:

Banking Law
Legal Aspects of International Finance
Regulation of Financial Markets
Securities Regulation
EU Financial Law
Law of Finance and Foreign Investment in Emerging Economies
International Economic Law
Insurance Law and Regulation
Financial Models and Derivatives in a Legal Context
Financial Management.

The LLM in Banking and Finance Law is one of the most popular specialisations of our LLM programme and financial law courses are an integral part of the Certificate and Diplomas in International Financial Law offered by CCLS.

The European Banking and Finance group has developed a joint MSc in Law and Finance with the School of Economics and Finance, a cutting edge interdisciplinary postgraduate programme that offers modules in law and finance, financial regulation, corporate finance, financial economics, and financial management. The MSc is an opportunity for facilitating collaborative research and opening up funding opportunities. The Msc in Law and Finance has run since 2009 and is proving a great success amongst a number of very qualified students who find the interdisciplinary approach in this area most rewarding and interesting.

A number of international conferences and regular seminars have been organized by members of the Institute. The financial crisis has triggered a number of regulatory reforms and EBF members have been very active in the process. For example, Professor Lastra organized an international symposium on 'The Quest for International Law in Financial Regulation' with John Jackson and Thomas Cottier in London on 21 May 2010, where papers that will be published as a Special Issue of the Journal of International Economic Law were discussed. Professor Lastra was also asked to co-head with Howell Jackson of Harvard Law School a conference on Cross Border Resolution of Financial Institutions sponsored by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and the American Law Institute, which was held in London on 3rd June 2011. Professor Tridimas and Dr Gari organized a conference on 'New Paradigms for Financial Regulation in the EU and the US', co-sponsored by the Forum for Company Law and Financial Market Law, University of Copenhagen, and the Brooklyn Law School in December 2009. Another example of the international visibility of EBF members is the number of invitations to talk or participate in discussions of international financial institutions as well as EU institutions. For instance, Professor Lastra was invited to give a talk on Central Bank Independence at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in October 2009; to be the keynote speaker for the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) in October 2010; to participate in the BIICL’s 11th Annual WTO Conference in May 2011 and to advise the IMF (International Monetary Fund) in 2010.

Expertise and Research Activities

EBF members are renown nationally and internationally for their expertise in financial law..

Dr Gabriel Gari

Gabriel Gari has made several presentations of his book on the liberalisation of trade in services in MERCOSUR (Cameron May, 2009) at universities, government bodies and industry associations in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. He also produced a paper on cross-border capital flows for the BIICL’s 11th Annual WTO Conference in May 2011. He has been appointed Member of the Board of Senior Professional Editors, Law and Business Review of the Americas, Southern Methodist University. He recently concluded a project for the Inter-American Development Bank on the compatibility of incentives for offshore business service providers with WTO disciplines. He also provided consultancy services to various international bodies including United Nations Development Programme, European Commission and European Parliament. He secured funding from Nuffield Foundation for examining access to justice at EU level (jointly with Professsor Tridimas). In his role as CCLS Director for Taught Programmes, he is responsible for overseeing development and implementation of the College’s Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy. Dr Gari was nominated for the Draper’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009 and 2010.

Professor Rosa M Lastra

Rosa Lastra is one of the leading experts in the fields of central banking, financial regulation and international monetary law. In June 2011 she was invited to give evidence to the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons on the accountability of the Bank of England in June. She has also been invited to take part in the ongoing consultation by Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) concerning the Government’s proposals for financial regulatory reform. As part of that consultation process, in November 2010, she co-organized with Charles Goodhart a Seminar with HMT to discuss the proposed supervisory structure in the UK, with an enhanced financial stability mandate for the Bank of England. Moreover, she advised the International Monetary Fund from July 2009 to June 2010 with regard to the cross border resolution of financial crises. Rosa Lastra acted as Specialist Advisor to the European Union Committee [Sub-Committee A] of the House of Lords regarding its inquiry into EU Financial Regulation from November 2008 to June 2009; the report on the Future of EU financial regulation and supervision was published in June 2009. She has also contributed to the consultation process by the tripartite authorities (Bank of England, FSA, Treasury) regarding banking reform in the UK. She is a general editor of the Journal of Banking Regulation, General Editor of the series ‘Research Handbooks in Financial Law’, published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Economic Law. She has published extensively in the field of monetary and financial law, including her treatise on Legal Foundations of International Monetary Stability (Oxford University Press, 2006) and a recently edited book on Cross Border Bank Insolvency (Oxford University Press, 2011). She is a Senior Research Associate of the Financial Markets Group of the London School of Economics, an Affiliated Scholar of the Center for the Study of Central Banking at New York University Law School, and a member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and of MOCOMILA (Monetary Committee of the International Law Association). She was also Visiting Professor of the University of Stockholm (2008-2010).

Professor Takis Tridimas

Takis Tridimas acted as special consultant to the European Central Bank on the regulation of clearing and settlement of securities transactions in relation to the introduction of Target 2 Securities platform. He was heavily involved in advising governments and private banks in relation to state aid law and other matters arising from the financial crisis. His academic work centres on EU law and financial sanctions against terrorism, human rights, the European Court of Justice, and financial services law. He has published extensively in the fields of EU Law, and international economic law. He was professeur invité at the Faculty of Law, Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) and the College of Europe, Burges, and presented papers in more than 20 international conferences and policy fora, including the Legal Service of the EU Council of Ministers, Brussels; the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House; Columbia Law School; the European University Institute, Florence; and the Universities of Oxford, Durham, Bristol; Leicester and Bamberg, Germany.

Dr Leon Vinokur

Leon Vinokur specialises in the fields of microeconomics and environmental economics and policy analysis. His current research focuses on applications of behavioural economics in environmental policy analysis and on the efficiency of Kyoto flexible mechanisms, which are widely regarded as the driving force behind the success of the Protocol. He is also examining the impact of the institutional constraints set by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme on the efficiency of the carbon permits spot market using intra-daily data. Specifically, he is interested in exploring how the banking ban and yearly compliance requirements, under which firms submit their carbon permits to cover their yearly emissions, impact the efficiency and transparency of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Leon has previously worked as a lawyer and a legal adviser at the Legal Advice Department of the Mayor’s Office of Haifa, Israel, and has been a member of the Israeli Bar Association since 2005.

Professor George Walker

George Walker is a Professor in International Financial Law at CCLS. He has written and published a large number of papers on the recent financial crisis and two major edited books with Michael Blair QC on Financial Services Law (OUP, 2007 and 2nd ed 2009) and Financial Markets and Exchanges Law (OUP, 2010). He has been made a general editor of Butterworth's Encyclopaedia of Banking Law and continues as an assistant editor of the parallel multi-volume loose leaf Financial Services Law. He has also written various monthly update and other regular regulatory reports and commented on many of the most significant official documents published recently. He is a senior examiner for the Securities and Investments Institute in London. He is a Barrister and Member of the Honourable Society of Inner Temple and a Legal Consultant with the International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. He has been an Affiliate Lecturer at Cambridge University and has held visiting research positions at Harvard University and subsequently at Georgetown Law School, Washington DC. He was an external examiner at Hong Kong University and has been a Visiting Academic Scholar at the Law School, University of Tokyo, Japan. He has recently been awarded a highly distinguished Major Research Fellowship with the Leverhulme Trust for 2011-2013 to work in the area of financial law. The purpose of the research is to examine the nature and content of Financial Law as an independent legal discipline and to produce a series of reference texts on financial law and regulation, financial crisis and financial stability with a new integrated theoretical framework being constructed for the examination of modern national, European and international banking and finance law.