Professor Niamh Moloney

This course is available on the Executive LLM. This course is not available as an outside option.

Available to Executive LLM students only. This course will be offered on the Executive LLM during the four year degree period. The Department of Law will not offer all Executive LLM courses every year, although some of the more popular courses may be offered in each year, or more than once each year. Please note that whilst it is the Department of Law's intention to offer all Executive LLM courses, its ability to do so will depend on the availability of the staff member in question. For more information please refer to the Department of Law website.

The course examines the EU's regulation of the capital markets. It considers the harmonized regulatory regime which applies to key capital market actors across the Member States and which supports the integrated market. The topics covered include: the rationale for integration and the role of law, the evolution of the integration project, and the impact of the financial crisis and subsequent reforms; the deregulation, liberalization, harmonization, and re-regulation mechanisms used to integrate and regulate the EU market and the role of the Court; market access and the passport for investment services; the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2014 (MiFID II) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation 2014 (MiFIR) and regulation; the liberalization of order execution and the regulation of trading venues; the 'UCITS' mutual funds regime; retail investor protection and conduct regulation; the prospectus and disclosure regime; gatekeepers (credit rating agencies and investment analysts); and the institutional structure for law-making and for supervision, including the European System of Financial Supervision and the European Securities and Markets Authority.  Course coverage may vary slightly from year to year.

24-26 hours of contact time.

Students will have the option of producing a formative exam question of 2000 words to be delivered one month from the end of the module’s teaching session by email.

Reading lists will be provided in advance for each seminar. Sample texts include: Moloney, EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation Regulation (2014), Veil (ed) European Capital Markets Law (2017), and Busch, Avgouleas, and Ferrarini (eds) Capital Markets Union in Europe (2018). 

Assessment path 1
Essay (100%, 8000 words).

Assessment path 2
Take home exam (100%).