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This chapter discusses Japanese securities law. Topics covered include the development of securities law in Japan; enactment of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (FIEL); goal, scope, and concepts of the FIEL; concepts of securities and financial instruments; collective investment schemes; financial instruments business and firms; tender offer; and market supervision.

This chapter considers how far, from 1875 onwards, the Judicial House of Lords affect the City of London and the financial services capital it has become. It looks at the four ways in which the impact of the House of Lords has been felt: general commercial law, financial law, financial regulation, and the glancing blow. It is argued that generally speaking, the House of Lords has served the City well. It has never engaged heavily in City affairs, but what it has done has been helpful to the world of commerce rather than the reverse.

This chapter presents the overall picture of the state of the art of European company law after the 2007/08 financial crisis. Citing a number of examples, it warns that the crisis has brought a temptation for many Member States to lock up their markets. The most obvious example is the regulation of third-country Sovereign Wealth Funds; but also that states may link bail out payments and subsidies to policies of the failing companies to save jobs at home and give preference to national contract partners.

Chapter 7 recounts how Dean Joseph M. McLaughlin accelerated and improved upon the Law School’s modernization initiated by Dean Mulligan. He began the transformation of the Law School into the mainstream of legal education by adopting a more academic orientation of the Law School’s mission and program and adopting many pedagogical reforms and administrative reforms. For example, Dean McLaughlin and separating the Law School’s funding raising from that of Fordham University. The university retarded the Law School’s development by diverting its revenues to subsidize the university’s other divisions. This led to a conflict in 1973 between Fordham University and the ABA and AALS over the university’s financial relationship to the Law School that continued to 1987.

Although it seems to be undisputed today that the harmonization of private law in the EU cannot take place without due regard for fundamental rights, many questions remain as to how and to what extent European private law can and should be influenced by fundamental rights. This chapter aims to explore these issues in the context of financial services and consists of two major parts. The first part discusses legal constructs which may serve as gateways to the impact of EU fundamental rights on European private law in the light of the constitutional limits to such impact. Drawing upon this analysis, the second part of the contribution examines the actual and potential impact of EU fundamental rights on European financial services law, with emphasis on three major issues arising in this field: (1) consumer access to financial services; (2) substantive consumer protection in financial services; and (3) procedural consumer protection in financial services.

Japan adopted the Securities and Exchange Law in 1948, modelled on US law. While the securities market rapidly developed at the time of high economic growth, the regulatory system lagged behind the growth of the market. In the aftermath of the ‘bubble economy’, improvement of the regulatory system was sought. Following the UK ‘Big Bang’, Japan launched its financial ‘Big Bang’ in 1996/1997. There was substantial deregulation in this area. The Securities and Exchange Law was replaced by the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law in 2006. Corporate disclosure system as well as the rules on TOB (takeover bids) have been improved.

Rebuilding confidence in the financial system after the Great Financial Crisis requires more than enacting new rules; it requires a change in behavior (ethical dimension) and a different set of incentives to reconnect the interests of bankers and financiers with the interests of society. Any new normative account of financial law—whether national, European, or international—must therefore consider that financial law does not operate in a vacuum and that we need to reconcile this rather “novel” discipline with “traditional” established legal principles, in particular when it comes to human rights. Indeed, one of the lessons of the crisis is that finance should not be dissociated from the ethical foundations that underlie the legal system. Finance needs to go back to being an instrument for wealth creation (and not just for a few) and development.

Traditionally, litigation has been a tool for dispute settlement in the international financial sector. The increasing involvement of parties from newly emerged economies and globalization has resulted in international arbitration being adopted more often as a means of settling financial controversies. A new institution called the Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance (“PRIME”) was established in 2012 at The Hague to assist judicial bodies in the settlement of complex disputes in the financial sector. This chapter examines the origins, institutional setting, and participatory elements of PRIME and evaluates its effectiveness. After presenting a taxonomy of reasons most commonly cited for using international arbitration, the chapter presents a critical appraisal of the “philosophy” of PRIME when it is called upon to resolve complex international controversies.

This chapter focuses on the international reach and jurisdiction of US Financial Laws with emphasis on anti-fraud provisions in private litigation. It analyses past cases that involve extraterritorial corporations outside the United States, such as the landmark Morrison v. Australia Bank Ltd. It analyses Morrison and describes how it extinguished two species of securities class-action claims that proliferated in preceding years: foreign-cubed claims and foreign-squared claims. The chapter also examines the process of inspecting foreigners by auditors of foreign issuers listed in the United States by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the extraterritorial scope of the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Furthermore, it looks into the jurisdiction of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which was enacted to prohibit the widespread bribery of foreign officials by US corporations.