Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

The Volcker Rule And The Presumption Against Extraterritoriality: Utterly Incompatible, Christine P. Henry

William & Mary Business Law Review

The Volcker Rule, enacted in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection Act to address the “too big to fail” problem in today’s interconnected global economy, has been controversial from the outset. The deadline for banks to comply with Volcker regulations has been extended several times, with the most recent deadline set for July 21, 2016. This Note examines the impact of the Volcker Rule on foreign banks, detailing the specific effects of Volcker regulations on two prominent German banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, and analyzes the countervailing European approach to regulating proprietary trading and risky investment. …

Cfpb Collection Activities Comment Letter, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Financial Misconduct, Ethical Theory, And Regulatory Ethics— Promoting Accountability, P. M. Vasudev

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This paper examines developments in the financial sector and identifies a role for regulatory ethics in promoting integrity and accountability. In this effort, the paper also explores theoretical perspectives in ethics and how they can shape business behavior. Specifically, the article proposes corporate codes of ethics, a mandatory requirement under the New York Stock Exchange Listing Rules, as instruments to promote morality in corporate conduct. Ethics codes, which are internally generated, must be tailored to reflect the experience and made more effective. They can be amplified to specify standards to govern the fiduciary duty of care applicable to executives, personal …

The Conscious Parallelism Of Wolf Packs: Applying The Antitrust Conspiracy Framework To Section 13(D) Activist Group Formation, William R. Tevlin

Fordham Law Review

Section 13(d) of the Williams Act requires all persons and groups that acquire 5 percent or more of an issuer’s outstanding stock to disclose their holdings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Whether a group is formed under section 13(d) often is unclear. The legal precedent is ambiguous; courts give more weight to certain forms of circumstantial evidence than others without explaining why. With the substantial increase of hedge fund activism—in particular, the wolf pack tactic—further clarity or uniformity is necessary. A “wolf pack” is a loose association of hedge funds that employs parallel activist strategies toward a target corporation …

Resetting The Baseline Of Ownership: Takings And Investor Expectations After The Bailouts, Nestor M. Davidson

Maryland Law Review

During the economic crisis that began in 2008, the federal government nationalized several of the nation’s most significant private companies as part of a broad effort to forestall a global depression. Shareholders in those companies later filed suit, alleging that the federal government in so doing—and in subsequent actions while in control of the firms—took their property without compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. To date, those claims have not succeeded. If these cases continue on their current trajectory, with courts rejecting arguments that the rescue of systematically important firms on the brink of collapse requires compensation for shareholders, …

Collaborative Gatekeepers, Stavros Gadinis, Colby Mangels University Of California - Berkeley

Washington and Lee Law Review

In their efforts to hold financial institutions accountable after the 2007 financial crisis, U.S. regulators have repeatedly turned to anti-money-laundering laws. Initially designed to fight drug cartels and terrorists, these laws have recently yielded billion-dollar fines for all types of bank engagement in fraud and have spurred an overhaul of financial institutions’ internal compliance. This increased reliance on anti-money-laundering laws, we argue, is due to distinct features that can better help regulators gain insights into financial fraud. Most other financial laws enlist private firms as gatekeepers and hold them liable if they knowingly or negligently engage in client fraud. Yet, …

The Order To Pay Money In Medieval Continental Europe, Benjamin Geva

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter discusses the evolution of non-cash payment mechanisms in the course of the development of the medieval banking system in Europe. The chapter sets out three categories of a medieval continental financier. The first category, pawnbrokers, consisted of lenders who lent out of their capital primarily for consumption who played no role in the development of the payment system. The second category consisted of moneychangers who accepted deposits and whose practices were rooted in in the manual exchange of coins. The third category consisted of exchange bankers whose practices emerged from the exchange of money in long distance trade. …

Where Kafka Reigns: A Call For Metamorphosis In Unlawful Detainer Law, John Campbell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This story reflects a new reality in which nonjudicial foreclosure, combined with draconian unlawful detainer laws, concretizes the injuries associated with wrongful foreclosure, degrades the perceived legitimacy of the courts, and suppresses valid claims of wrongful foreclosure. Indeed, this very scenario happens regularly in a variety of states. This story is a very real tale of how homeowners are harmed by a foreclosure process that has largely escaped scholarly review. Rooted in the belief that sunshine is a powerful disinfectant, this Article aims to shed light on states that hogtie homeowners and makes a normative argument that such a process …

Bitcoin And The Uniform Commercial Code, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

Much of the discussion of bitcoin in the popular press has concentrated on its status as a currency. Putting aside a vocal minority of radical libertarians and anarchists, however, many bitcoin enthusiasts are concentrating on how its underlying technology – the blockchain – can be put to use for wide variety of uses. For example, economists at the Fed and other central banks have suggested that they should encourage the evolution of bitcoin’s blockchain protocol which might allow financial transactions to clear much efficiently than under our current systems. As such, it also holds out the possibility of becoming that …

Student Loan Derivatives: Improving On Income-Based Approaches To Financing Law School, Benjamin M. Leff, Heather Hughes

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Moving Beyond Bitcoin To An Endogenous Theory Of Decentralized Ledger Technology Regulation: An Initial Proposal, Carla L. Reyes

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Trusts No More: Rethinking The Regulation Of Retirement Savings In The United States, Natalya Shnitser

BYU Law Review

The regulation of private and public pension plans in the United States begins with the premise that employer-sponsored plans resemble traditional donative, or gift, trusts. Accordingly, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) famously “imports” major principles of donative trust law for the regulation of private employer-sponsored pension plans. Statutes regulating state and local government pension plans likewise routinely invoke the structure and standards applicable to donative trusts. Judges, in turn, adjudicate by analogy to the common law trust.

This Article identifies the flaws in the analogy and analyzes the shortcomings of a regulatory framework that, despite dramatic …

Mobile Banking: The Answer For The Unbanked In America?, Catherine Martin Christopher

Catholic University Law Review

In the United States, the poor often lack access to mainstream banking services. Instead, they rely on expensive, poorly regulated alternatives like check cashers, payday lenders, pawnshops, and auto title lenders. These financial products jeopardize poor people’s financial and physical security. In pushing adoption of traditional banking products, both government officials and private enterprise have attempted to craft solutions to the banking access problem, but so far these attempts have fallen short. This Article asserts that mobile banking may be a transformative technology that can significantly increase financial inclusion in the United States.

The Article discusses current statistics and demographics …

The Lawyer's Duty Of Disclosure Ethics And Sarbanes-Oxley The New Conundrum For Patent Lawyers, Abraham C. Reich, Steven J. Rocci

Akron Intellectual Property Journal

The general purpose of this paper is to sensitize intellectual property lawyers to the potential impact on their practice created by Sarbanes-Oxley. At a more detailed level, and because of the unique challenges facing them, this paper addresses Sarbanes-Oxley's potential impact on patent lawyers who practice before the PTO, even when it is the patent lawyer's sole practice. To that end, this paper will highlight relevant portions of Rule 56, the relevant ethical code sections, and the pertinent considerations under Sarbanes-Oxley.

Helping Yourself While Serving Two Masters: Do Specialists Violate Rule 10b-5 When They Interposition?, Roman Asudulayev

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The decision of the Second Circuit in United States v. Finnerty (Finnerty III) was the culmination of a number of District Court decisions that found that specialists on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) could not be held liable for fraud under Rule 10b-5 for interpositioning, whereby they put themselves between buy and sell limit orders, in violation of NYSE rules, and profited on the spread. Finnerty III and its District Court sibling decisions were wrongly decided. Specialists presented a uniquely thorny issue of agency law to the Federal Courts in New York. This issue was under-analyzed by the Federal …

Fhfa Duty To Serve Comment Letter, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

The Global Significance Of Crowdfunding: Solving The Sme Funding Problem And Democratizing Access To Capital, Alma Pekmezovic, Gordon Walker

William & Mary Business Law Review

This Article provides a comprehensive review of the crowdfunding phenomenon. It argues that equity crowdfunding (“ECF”) and, to a lesser extent, peer-to-peer lending (“P2PL”) offer the possibility of a global solution to the small and medium-sized enterprise (“SME”) funding problem. In the United States, the SME funding problem is exacerbated by the markedly diminishing rate of startup formation, a factor that injects a degree of urgency into resolving the optimal means to implement ECF. Here, as with the “fin-tech” revolution, the law lags behind technological developments. The second main argument is that ECF enhances access to capital for SMEs globally …

"Special," Vestigial, Or Visionary? What Banking Regulation Tells Us About The Corporation—And Vice Versa, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Seattle University Law Review

A remarkable yet seldom noted set of parallels exists between modern U.S. bank regulation, on the one hand, and what used to be garden-variety American corporate law, on the other hand. For example, just as bank charters are matters not of right but of conditional privilege even today, so were all corporate charters not long ago. Just as chartered banks are authorized to engage only in limited, enumerated activities even today, so were all corporations restricted not long ago. And just as banks are subject to strict capital regulation even today, so were all corporations not long ago. In this …

Bringing Continuity To Cryptocurrency: Commercial Law As A Guide To The Asset Categorization Of Bitcoin, Evan Hewitt

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will undertake to analyze bitcoin under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the Internal Revenue Code (IRC)—two important sources of commercial law—to see whether any existing asset categories adequately protect bitcoin’s commercial viability. This Note will demonstrate that although commercial law dictates that bitcoin should—nay must—be regulated as a currency in order to sustain its existence, the very definition of currency seems to preclude that from happening. Therefore, this Note will recommend that we experiment with a new type of asset that receives currency-like treatment, specifically designed for cryptocurrencies, under which bitcoin can be categorized in order to …

Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin

Seattle University Law Review

In 1976, Michael Jensen and William Meckling published a paper reintroducing agency theory that explained how the modern corporation is structured to serve dispersed shareholders. They purported to describe the world as it exists but, in fact, they described a utopia, and their piece was read as a blueprint for that utopia. We take a page from the sociology of knowledge to argue that, in the modern world, economic theories function as prescriptions for behavior as much as they function as descriptions. Economists and management theorists often act as prophets rather than scientists, describing the world not as it is, …

Securities Law Panel, Ronald J. Colombo, Allison Caffarone, Bertrand C. Fry, J. Scott Colesanti

Journal of International Business and Law Symposia

No abstract provided.

Banking Law / Money Laundering Panel, Christine I. Magdo, Ernest T. Patrikis, Achilles M. Perry, David Szuchman

Journal of International Business and Law Symposia

No abstract provided.

Commodities Law / Foreign Exchange Panel, Gary E. Kalbaugh, Kari Larsen, Ryne V. Miller, Felix Shipkevich

Journal of International Business and Law Symposia

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address, Gary Barnett

Journal of International Business and Law Symposia

No abstract provided.

Conference Program

Journal of International Business and Law Symposia

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, North Carolina Banking Institute

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.

De Novo Banks: Viable Business Model Or Quaint Relic From The Past, Ray Grace

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.

Customer Due Diligence: Fincen And The Beneficial Ownership Requirement For Legal Entity Customers, Adam S. Coto

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.

Chapter 2 In The History Of Cmbs: Coming To Terms With The New Rules, Alan Kronovet, Chris Van Heerden

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.

Leveraged Lending Guidance And Enforcement: Moving The Fulcrum, Peter Webb

North Carolina Banking Institute

No abstract provided.