LL407E Half Unit
Regulation of Financial Markets II
This information is for the 2021/22 session.
Teacher responsible
Dr Philipp Paech NAB7.05
Availability
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.
Course content
The digital provision of financial services is becoming the norm, increasingly being combined with services provided by non-traditional financial market participants, such as giant technology companies (BigTech) which are already the railway barons of the current age. Simultaneously, society increasingly recognises the mechanisms of the financial markets as an enabler for the transformation towards a more sustainable economy. This leads to a situation in which regulation has to accommodate structural market change with all associated risks and opportunities, while, at the same time, the rationales for regulation are being extended to cover environmental, social and governance aspects.
This course charts the extended boundaries of regulation and supervision affecting financial services and explores the need for a re-conceptualisation of financial regulation and supervision, necessary to enable and control contemporary and future financial services.
In a first part, the course explores general axioms that underly financial regulation of digital finance. In its second part, this course will turn to concrete policy areas.
The course is internationally oriented and draws most of its examples from the standards set by the global committees (FSB, Basel, CPMI, etc.) and from the rules adopted in the UK, EU and elsewhere, with comparisons to the regulatory debate in the PRC and USA, without focusing in detail on any specific jurisdiction.
The course shall enable participants from all jurisdictions to understand, put into context and use the main techniques of financial regulation in the context of digitisation of the world. The further development of the current 'hot topics' is an on-going international exercise, and this course enables participants to engage in the relevant debates. The combination of this general approach with more specialised topics will enable participants to navigate through the panoply of existing and projected financial regulation without the necessity to cut through the thicket of very technical provisions. The three key aims of this course are, accordingly:
- Introducing participants to the main theoretical foundations of financial regulation of a digitized market, so that they understand the 'why', 'how' and 'who', regardless of what concrete regulatory issue they will be looking at in the future.
- Exploring the most important policy areas in the field of digital finance regulation, all of which are undergoing fundamental overhaul in light of further digitalisation of the financial market.
- Enable participants to follow and shape the debate around how to regulate digital financial services, be it their current or future role in the financial sector, as legal practitioner, central banker, policy maker, researcher or NGO-representative.
This course examines the regulatory structures governing financial markets and financial services. It covers the main principles of international, EU and UK financial regulation with the aim of developing a critical understanding of the conceptual framework for financial regulation. This half unit focuses on financial stability, including macro and micro-prudential regulation, regulation of trading and market infrastructure, and on new and emerging issues in financial regulation.
The course does not aim to provide a detailed comparative account of financial regulation across countries, but international comparisons may be made where these are useful. In this context, students are encouraged to draw on their knowledge of their own national systems of regulation in making comparisons, and to apply the analytical perspectives suggested to those systems. The focus will be on the regulation of national and international aspects of financial services and markets, rather than on private law and transactional aspects.
No previous knowledge of financial market regulation or background in economics is required for those wishing to follow this course. Indeed, the course provides a good background for further study of both financial and economic law and economic analysis of law. For non-lawyers, a willingness to engage in legal analysis will be necessary, although a legal background is not required. The course might be regarded as complimentary to a number of other courses, including Law of Corporate Finance or International Financial Law and Practice I & II.
Topics include:
- Digital Financial Services and the Principles of Regulating Financial Markets.
- Regulating Technology?
- Platforms and BigTech: Structural Change of the Financial Market as Test of Institutions and Activities-based Regulation.
- Ethical Questions of AI-based Financial Services.
- Regulating Crypto-Assets, Stable Coins and CBDC.
- Financial Regulation and Data Regulation.
- The use of RegTech and SupTech and Regulatory Incentives for Standardisation.
- Set up of Supervision and Regulation as Innovation Facilitator.
Teaching
24-26 hours of contact time.
Formative coursework
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.
Indicative reading
A full reading list will be distributed during the course and essential materials will be made available to the students, where possible. In addition, the students will be invited to do independent reading. Good general introductions to financial markets and their regulation include: A Turner et al, The Future of Finance: The LSE Report (2010); S Valdez and P. Molyneaux, Introduction to Global Financial Markets (7th edn).
Assessment
Assessment path 1
Essay (100%, 8000 words).
Assessment path 2
Take-home assessment (100%).
Course selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Important information in response to COVID-19
Please note that during 2021/22 academic year some variation to teaching and learning activities may be required to respond to changes in public health advice and/or to account for the differing needs of students in attendance on campus and those who might be studying online. For example, this may involve changes to the mode of teaching delivery and/or the format or weighting of assessments. Changes will only be made if required and students will be notified about any changes to teaching or assessment plans at the earliest opportunity.
Key facts
Department: Law
Total students 2020/21: Unavailable
Average class size 2020/21: Unavailable
Controlled access 2020/21: No
Value: Half Unit
Personal development skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills
