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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

Financial Innovation In East Asia, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, Michael Panton Mar 2014

Financial Innovation In East Asia, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, Michael Panton

Seattle University Law Review

Finance is important for development. However, the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 and the global financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the serious risks associated with financial liberalization and excessive innovation. East Asia’s strong focus on economic growth has necessitated a careful balancing of the benefits of financial liberalization and innovation against the very real risks inherent in financial sector development. This Article examines the role of regulatory, legal, and institutional infrastructure in supporting both financial development and limiting the risk of financial crises. The Article then addresses a series of issues with particular developmental significance in the region: trade finance, …


Enhancing The Transparency Dialogue In The “Santiago Principles” For Sovereign Wealth Funds, Adam D. Dixon Mar 2014

Enhancing The Transparency Dialogue In The “Santiago Principles” For Sovereign Wealth Funds, Adam D. Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

The financial crisis ultimately caused Western governments to welcome sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment as a way to put a floor under collapsing markets and to provide a set of voluntary principles that would underwrite SWFs’ claim to legitimacy in the international community. In the autumn of 2007, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, convened the International Working Group of SWFs (IWG) to draft a set of generally accepted principles and practices. These principles are referred to as the “Santiago Principles.” The implicit objective of these twenty-four voluntary principles is to promote greater …


The Evolution Of Corporate Governance In Japan: The Continuing Relevance Of Berle And Means, Takaya Seki, Thomas Clarke Mar 2014

The Evolution Of Corporate Governance In Japan: The Continuing Relevance Of Berle And Means, Takaya Seki, Thomas Clarke

Seattle University Law Review

The evolution of corporate governance in Japan towards international standards continues, though at a gradual pace that often concerns outsiders. The substance of Japanese corporate governance is often questioned due to a lack of understanding of the unique elements of the Japanese institutional system. Japanese companies are under a sustained assault from overseas investors to introduce a greater number of independent directors on boards, improve accountability, and enhance transparency. The majority of Japanese companies have taken what they regard as significant steps in this direction of accountability. In Japan, however, there is a different conception of the role of the …


Culture Wars: Rate Manipulation, Institutional Corruption, And The Lost Normative Foundations Of Market Conduct Regulation, Justin O'Brien Mar 2014

Culture Wars: Rate Manipulation, Institutional Corruption, And The Lost Normative Foundations Of Market Conduct Regulation, Justin O'Brien

Seattle University Law Review

The global investigations into the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) have raised significant questions about how conflicts of interest are managed for regulated entities contributing to benchmarks. An alternative framework, which brings the management of the rate process under direct regulatory supervision, is under consideration, coordinated by the International Organization of Securities Commissions taskforce. The articulation of global principles builds on a review commissioned by the British government that suggests rates calculated by submission can be reformed. This paper argues that this approach is predestined to fail, precisely because it ignores the lessons of history. In revisiting …


The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy Mar 2014

The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

The distinction between specific concrete rules and general abstract principles has engaged legal theorists for decades. This rules–principles distinction has also become increasingly important in corporate and securities law, as well as financial market regulation. This Article adds two important variables to the rules–principles debate: timing and source. Although these two variables are relevant to legal theory generally, the specific goal here is not to address and engage the rules versus principles literature directly. Rather, the goal here is to ask whether the debate about financial market regulation might benefit from a more transparent analysis of temporal and legal source …


Australia’S Experience With Foreign Direct Investment By State Controlled Entities: A Move Towards Xenophobia Or Greater Openness?, Greg Golding Mar 2014

Australia’S Experience With Foreign Direct Investment By State Controlled Entities: A Move Towards Xenophobia Or Greater Openness?, Greg Golding

Seattle University Law Review

Over the last few years, there has been considerable debate in Australia as to the appropriate regulation of foreign direct investment by entities affiliated with foreign governments. During that time, Australia has been a significant beneficiary of investment by sovereign wealth funds from many foreign jurisdictions, particularly by Chinese state owned enterprises. The Australian government, similar to governments of many developed Western countries, has struggled to properly calibrate its policy settings for regulating this type of investment activity. This Article considers the Australian regulatory regime and assesses Australia’s experience in regulating those investment flows during this period.


State Capital: Global And Australian Perspectives, George Gilligan, Megan Bowman Mar 2014

State Capital: Global And Australian Perspectives, George Gilligan, Megan Bowman

Seattle University Law Review

The activities of state-related pools of capital need to be understood within the context of an era of globalization, in which economic and political ties between many jurisdictions are deepening, A variety of modes of governance are emerging that have a capacity for impacts of broad international scope. The rising influence of more proactive state-led capitalism is one of the shaping variables in how the global economy has been changing swiftly in recent decades, and the effects of the Global Financial Crisis have arguably accelerated these structural shifts. This Article identifies three discrete phenomena in the state capital arena. First, …


What Is A Corporation? Liberal, Confucion, And Socialist Theories Of Enterprise Organization (And State, Family, And Personhood), Teemu Ruskola Mar 2014

What Is A Corporation? Liberal, Confucion, And Socialist Theories Of Enterprise Organization (And State, Family, And Personhood), Teemu Ruskola

Seattle University Law Review

What is a corporation? An easy, but not very informative, answer is that it is a legal person. More substantive answers suggest it is a moral person, a person/thing, a production team, a nexus of private agreements, a city, a semi-sovereign, or a (secular) God. Despite the economic, political, and social importance of the corporate form, we do not have a generally accepted legal theory of what a corporation is, apart from the law’s questionable assertion that it is a “person.” In this Article, the author places the idea, and law, of the corporation in a comparative context and suggests …


"Quack Corporate Governance" As Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas Calcina Howson Mar 2014

"Quack Corporate Governance" As Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas Calcina Howson

Seattle University Law Review

From the start of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “corporatization” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by all-encompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This Article traces the path of that sustained intervention and makes a case—wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the United States—that for the PRC this phenomenon …