Oxford Business Law Blog

It is often said that transactions made on the blockchain are immutable: once the transaction is done, it is done. And in principle they are indeed immutable. Aside from security breaches, changes to...

Large investors often have market power in private equity markets, such as in venture capital, growth capital, or private placements. The conventional wisdom is that powerful investors can flex their...

Although various authorities in the US have repeatedly claimed that they do not wish to over-regulate cryptoassets or to stifle innovation in the space, overlapping regulations produced by a...

On October 18, federal regulators released the largest U.S. insurance group, Prudential Financial, Inc., from enhanced government oversight. Prudential had been the last remaining systemically...

In our paper ‘Data, Innovation and Transatlantic Competition in Finance: The Case of the Access to Account Rule’, we focus on the EU regulatory effort, enshrined in Directive 2366/2015 on payment...

The breach of Union law procedure of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) has been in the spotlight recently. In July, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a recommendation under the...

In the decade after the global financial crisis 2007–09, financial regulation reforms have been extensive, led at the international level by the Basel Committee of the Bank for International...

Investor protection has been an ideal in corporate and securities law ever since the early 20th century, when Berle and Means famously highlighted shareholder vulnerability in modern public...

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, now ten years ago, was neither the start nor the peak of the financial crisis. Yet, the demise of the iconic investment bank, the fourth-largest in the United...

Transaction avoidance rules are widely thought to be an important tool in the regulation of related party transactions entered into by an insolvent or near insolvent firm. Such rules offer direct...

Following the great financial crisis in 2008, preventing future bail-outs for large, systemically important banks while minimizing the repercussions of bank insolvencies on the stability of the...

Speakers associated with the Oxford MSc in Law and Finance recently met for a panel discussion on Technology and Finance. TJ Saw, Deployment Strategist at Palantir Technologies, who was involved in...

The proportion of women in boardroom has traditionally been low around the world. Over the last decades, several jurisdictions have adopted legislative actions in order to trigger a tangible progress...

The death of the Glass-Steagall Act was the result of affirmative policy decisions by federal regulators and Congress. It was not the inevitable byproduct of market forces. Economic disruptions and...

Whilst the word ‘disruptive’ may have negative connotations, the potential applications of disruptive technologies can lead to positive developments in emerging markets. This potential is constrained...

Twenty years ago, the first of a series of tremendously influential papers on 'Law and Finance' was published by Rafael La Porta and his colleagues. By putting legal institutions at the centre of...

Because of their pernicious tendency to serve as a vehicle for extracting value from firms, related party transactions (RPTs) have come to epitomize corporate governance ills. The regulation of RPTs...

Why are security interests and legal entities both widely used? The prevailing answer in legal scholarship is that both bodies of law exist to partition assets for the benefit of designated creditors...

It is now twenty years since the publication of La Porta et al’s “Law and Finance” paper in the Journal of Political Economy. Although the methodology used in early law and finance papers attracted...

The recent Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) decision in Moody’s Investors Service Hong Kong Limited v Securities and Futures Commission [2018] HKCFA 42 raises very important issues regarding...