Financial Advice And Investor Protection

This comprehensive book offers a rigorous analysis of the legal debates, approaches and practice-related issues surrounding financial advice and investor protection. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of financial inclusion more broadly construed, recent financial crises have highlighted deficits in retail investor protection – this book informs the development of robust yet adaptable frameworks to protect investors, including effective enforcement and dispute resolution.

This series enables practitioners to stay up to date with litigation and developments in the field of entertainment law. Emphasis is placed on the practical implications of relevant legislative developments and the effects of technology on artists, rights owners and collecting societies

The spate of mis-selling episodes that have plagued the financial services industries in recent years has caused widespread detriment to investors. Notwithstanding numerous regulatory interventions, curtailing the incidence of poor investment advice remains a challenge for regulators, particularly because these measures are taken in a 'fire-fighting' fashion without adequate consideration being given to the root causes of mis-selling. Against this backdrop, this book focuses on the sale of complex investment products to corporate retail investors by drawing upon the widespread mis-selling of interest rate hedging products (IRHP) in the UK and beyond. It brings to the fore the relatively understudied field concerning the different degrees of investor protection mechanisms applicable to individual retail investors – as opposed to corporate retail investors – by taking stock of past regulatory reforms and forthcoming regulatory initiatives as well as, more importantly, the conclusions reached by the judiciary in IRHP mis-selling claims. The conclusions are particularly interesting: corporate retail investors are in a vulnerable position when compared to individual retail investors. The former are exposed to a heightened risk of mis-selling, meaning that regulatory intervention should be targeted accordingly. The recommendations made as a result of these findings are further supported by insights emerging from behavioural law and economic theories. This book is aimed at researchers, lawyers and students with an interest in the financial regulation field who are keen to explore potential regulatory reforms to the investment services regime that address the root causes of mis-selling, and restore a level playing field amongst all retail investors.

A critical, comparative and contextual examination of how to protect retail or household investors which considers the financial crisis's implications.

This book analyzes the legal system for the protection of retail investors under the European Union law of investment services. It identifies the regulatory leitmotiv driving the EU lawmaker and ascertains whether and to what extent such a system is self-sufficient, using a set of EU-made and EU-enforced rules that is essentially different and autonomous from the domestic legal orders. In this regard, the book takes a double perspective: comparative and intra-firm. Given the federal dimension of the US legal system and, thus, the "role-model" it plays vis-à-vis the EU, the book compares the two systems. To fully highlight the existing gaps and measure how self-sufficient the EU system is against its American counterpart, the Union/Federal level as such is analyzed - i.e., detached from the national (in EU terms) and State (in US terms) level. Regulating Investor Protection under EU Law also showcases the unique intra-firm perspective from a European investment firm and analyzes how EU-produced public-law rules become a set of compliance requirements for investment services providers. This "within-the-firm" angle gauges the self-sufficiency of the EU system of retail investor protection from the standpoint of an EU-regulated entity. The book is intended for both compliance professionals and academic scholars interested in this topic while also including illustrative sections intended to provide a broader regulatory view for less-experienced readers.

Asset management is a major industry playing an increasingly important role in economic activity around the world. Asset managers provide services to individuals, governments, public agencies, banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and charities, to name a few. Traditionally, asset management has been primarily associated with the 'stock market' economies of the UK and the USA, but, as this book shows, some of the most spectacular growth in activity of recent years has occurred in Continental Europe. This has presented opportunities and challenges. New forms of financial instruments and institutions have emerged in countries that have traditionally relied on debt and non-market forms of intermediation. Competition has intensified, and entry has occurred both within and across national markets. However, this growth has been accompanied by potential problems: while investors enjoy a wider range of products and services, they face more complex instruments and transactions. Therefore, the potential for failures, such as misdealing and fraud, may have increased. The natural response is to strengthen regulation, but there is a fine balance to be struck between inadequate and excessive regulation of asset managers. This is particularly complicated in the context of European capital markets. European countries have traditionally had very different financial systems and asset management businesses, therefore it is no surprise to discover many different approaches to regulating asset managers. How should the European Commission respond to this diversity? Should it seek to create greater uniformity via common regulatory rules? The particular focus of this book is financial resource requirements. There is currently an active debate about the role capital requirements should play in asset management, particularly in the European context. In order to address this issue, the authors argue that it is necessary to understand the nature of the asset management business in different countries and the risks that it faces. They therefore discuss how the asset management business operates; how it is organized; the nature and size of risks in the business, who bears them, and how they are financed; and what the alternative forms of investor protection are, together with their associated costs and benefits.

This work provides guidance on legal and regulatory risks, and the protection of the investor, throughout the investment cycle, analysing financial investments, their markets, the market infrastructure, and the roles and responsibilities of financial intermediaries.