Unconscionability In European Private Financial Transactions

Given the unprecedented recent turmoil on financial markets we now face radically challenged, 'post-Lehmann' assumptions on protecting the vulnerable in financial transactions. This collection of essays explores conceptions of, and responses to, unconscionability and similar notions across Europe with specific reference to financial transactions. It presents a detailed analysis of concepts of unconscionability in Europe against a backdrop of Commission initiatives aimed, variously, at securing a single market in financial services, producing greater coherence in EC consumer protection law and consolidating European private law. This analysis illustrates, for example, that concepts of unconscionability depend on context and can be shaped by a variety of factors. It also illustrates that jurisdictions may choose to respond to questions of unconscionability through a variety of legal instruments located in different branches of the law rather than through a single doctrine. Thus this collection illuminates many of the obstacles facing harmonisation in this area.

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.

The involvement of the EU in regulating private conduct and relationships between individuals is increasing. As a result, EU law affects the scope of private autonomy in ever wider contexts, sparking tensions with fundamental concepts of national private law systems. This volume offers a descriptive and normative account of the involvement of EU law in private law relationships. The recurring theme in the collected papers is the scope of policy objectives which are apt to legitimise the European Union's as yet unsystematic tendency to serve as a source of restrictions of private autonomy. The nature and purpose of the involvement of European Union law in private law relationships is investigated by the authors from both the substantive and the constitutional perspective. The papers look at such sectors regulating private law relationships as consumer law, labour law, competition law, equal treatment law and the law of remedies. While focusing on private law relationships the authors investigate more general concepts of EU law, such as the Internal Market freedoms and general principles of law, and the different modes of ensuring the effective application of EU secondary law.

Notwithstanding recent increases in the scope for judicial cooperation and dialogue between European courts, little research has been undertaken into the impact of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, and the dialogue that arises therefrom, in national legal systems between courts and regulators. This coherent collection of original chapters provides unique insights into these developments – with a particular focus on consumer law – from a broad range of stakeholders, including academics and judges from the EU and the US.

A critical overview of the Europeanisation of private law at a watershed moment, a point of punctuated equilibrium.

In this comparative study in US and EU law, Noah Vardi questions whether there is a legally enforceable duty to lend and borrow credit in a “responsible” manner and clarifies the associated notion of “creditworthiness.”

The growing use of housing equity to support a range of activities and needs raises complex issues, particularly for older owners. In an environment in which older owners are pushed towards housing equity transactions to meet income and welfare costs, they are required to make choices from a complex and sometimes bewildering range of options. The transactions which facilitate the use of home equity as a resource to spend in later life - from 'trading down' and 'ordinary' secured and unsecured debt to targeted products including reverse/lifetime mortgages, home reversion plans and sale-and-rentback agreements - raise important legal and regulatory issues. This book provides a contextual analysis of the financial transactions that older people enter into using their housing equity. It traces the protections afforded to older owners through the 'ordinary' law of property and contract, as well as the development of specific regulatory protections focused on targeted products. The book employs the notion of risk to highlight the nature and causes of the 'situational' vulnerabilities to which older people are now subject as 'consumers' of housing equity, showing that the older owner's personal situation is crucial in determining whether and why they may seek to release equity, the options and products available to them, and the impact of harms resulting from adverse transactions. The book critically evaluates the extent to which this context is incorporated in the legal frameworks through which these transactions are governed, as a measure of the 'appropriateness' of existing legal provision, as well as considering the arguments surrounding 'special protection' for older owners in housing equity transactions.

One of the most important EU consumer protection directives of the past decade, the 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, or UCPD, is brought under examination in this stimulating volume. Bringing together leading experts in the comparative law and consumer law domain, the book discusses the impact of the Directive and whether the many possible issues identified at its inception have been borne out in practice. Divided into four parts of 'Implementation, Approximation and Harmonization', 'Vulnerability', 'The UCP Directive and Other Regimes', and finally 'Enforcement', the volume examines the various policy developments, the growing body of case law, the decisions of relevant national enforcement authorities, as well as the legislative debates which have surrounded the implementation of the UCPD in Member States. This book provides a valuable assessment of the impact of a major EU directive almost ten years after its adoption, and as such will be of interest to academics, legal practitioners and the judiciary working in the areas of European and Consumer law.