international finance archive 2022
Week 14 (class on April 20) W agreed we would focus on review for the last week of the semester. In class on Wednesday we can discuss any questions you may have. Also I plan to talk about the exam. I will use the Spring 2021 exam as the basis for discussion.
April 19, 2022: As we are this week thinking about wrapping up what we have been studying this semester I put together a powerpoint which uses the money, geography, law nexus I began the semester with: MGL Powerpoint
Week 13 (Class on April 13):
This week I would like to focus on 2 issues relating to Fintech. First, issues relating to the regulation of cryptocurrencies and second, central bank digital currencies (you may remember that Executive Order 14067 directs the study of whether there should be a US CBDC). I am also adding an additional reading on the issue of Fintech access to the Federal Reserve System, in case that issue interests you.
Cryptocurrency Regulation:
Prepared Remarks of Gary Gensler On Crypto Markets, Penn Law Capital Markets Association Annual Conference (Apr. 2022)
Ripple Case Presses Forward as Court Denies Motions to Dismiss and Strike, Baker Hostetler (March 16, 2022)
Proposal for a Regulation on on Markets in Crypto-assets, COM(2020) 593 final (Sep. 24, 2020) (pp 1-31- explanatory memorandum and recitals)
CBDCs:
Federal Reserve, Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation (Jan. 2022).
Fabio Panetta, (Speech) More than an intellectual game: exploring the monetary policy and financial stability implications of central bank digital currencies (Apr. 2022)
(if interested in exploring more, see, e.g., the BIS Innovation Hub)
Additional Reading:
Federal Reserve, Community Bank Access to Innovation through Partnerships (Sep. 2021)
Week 12 (Class on April 6):
We will spend the next two weeks looking at issues relating to fintech, a very broad term that applies to technological developments across a broad range of financial activity. Much of what we see in the news about fintech relates to cryptocurrency, but fintech is much broader than that, covering new payments systems, technology to facilitate regulation (regtech) and compliance, and robo-advising. We have already noticed issues about the extent to which regulation should encourage innovation, and those issues are important in this context. And in the material on compliance there was a suggestion that increasing competition for banks could help address problems with banks’ treatment of their customers. So the idea that new businesses based on new technology can be disruptive actors in the financial system is out there, but we also know that disruptive businesses don’t always have the sorts of approach to compliance we hope for: if your business model is to do things differently and to be sceptical of the existing regulatory landscape you may have views about compliance that diverge from the views of regulators.
Here is the reading for this week:
Executive Order 14067, Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets, 87 Fed. Reg. 14143 (Mar.14, 2022)
OFAC, Sanctions Compliance Guidance for the Virtual Currency Industry (Oct. 2021)
Bank of England, Financial Conduct Authority, Artificial Intelligence Public-Private Forum Final Report (Feb. 2022)
El Bachir Boukherouaa et al, Powering the Digital Economy: Opportunities and Risks of Artificial Intelligence in Finance, IMF Departmental Paper, DP/2021/024 (Oct 2021)
OECD, Why Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Matters and the Policy Implications (2022)
There’s a video on this Deloitte Regtech Universe web page you may enjoy.
Week 11 (Class on March 30):
Here is the reading for this week: International Finance: Compliance
Joel Suss, David Bholat, Alex Gillespie & Tom Reader, Organisational culture and Bank Risk, Bank of England Staff Working Paper 912 (Mar. 5, 2021)
Lectures: Sanctions: Transparency
Here is a powerpoint (not narrated) I produced for am AIJA meeting on Monday Mar 28: AIJA Presentation
Week 10 (Class on March 23)
Here are readings for this week:
1. International Finance: Sanctions 2
2. Unicredit Bank Non-Prosecution Agreement (Apr. 15, 2019)
3. The Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review
Week 9: Spring Break
I hope you have a good spring break.
Over the break I will be working on the plan and materials for the rest of the semester: sanctions for the week after the break, focusing specifically on Russia; 1 week on compliance/misconduct issues; 2 weeks on Fintech, and then, for the last week, either recovery of the proceeds of corruption or review. If we do study the corruption related material I will schedule a separate review session.
I will post the materials for the week after the break early next week.
Week 8 (Mar. 9, 2022)
We have touched on sanctions measures in passing so far, but this week we will begin to study some of the legal issues around sanctions measures. I plan to follow this week’s focus on sanctions generally with a more detailed focus on the Russian sanctions after Spring Break, and then we can examine some issues relating to compliance, looking at some examples of international compliance failures with respect to sanctions AML and other issues. This segment of the class is on Financial Warfare, Compliance and International Finance: Sanctions, Money Laundering, Libor.
Week 8 Reading Assignment
International Finance: Sanctions 1
Week 7 (Mar. 2, 2022)
We will move on to think about payments and financial markets infrastructures. This follows from the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank case and introduces us to some aspects of transnational financial regulation (payments systems are Financial Markets Infrastructures or FMIs) as well as relating to sanctions measures (you will have seen references to the SWIFT payment system in the news). I am leaving up the links to last week’s asynchronous material and I will also add my lecture on Law Debenture v Ukraine from last year, as well as a new lecture on the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank case (which will probably not be up until Saturday afternoon/evening). In class we can begin with questions/comments you have on the reading we did not get to in our synchronous class and then we can move on to the payments materials.
Week 7 reading assignment:
Issues in Transnational Financial Regulation
Hilary J. Allen, Payments Failure, 62 Boston College Law Review 453 (2021)
Federal Reserve Policy on Payment System Risk (Oct. 2020)
Tanai Khiaonarong & Terry Goh, Fintech and Payments Regulation: Analytical Framework, IMF Working Paper WP/20/75 (May 29, 2020)
Alina Iancu et al, Reserve Currencies in an Evolving International Monetary System, IMF Strategy, Policy, & Review Department & Statistics Department Paper 20/02 (Nov. 17, 2020)
Asynchronous lectures:
(from week 6) Standard Forms (as I mentioned in class audio was recorded in 2021); Collective Action Clauses
(new for week 7):Law Debenture v Ukraine; Financial Markets Infrastructures; LAFB v Bankers’ Trust
Week 6 (February 23, 20922) We will continue looking at issues involving sovereigns/state owned entities in litigation in International Finance: Sovereigns 3
This material focuses on 3 different examples of litigation: litigation over the right to control and have Venezuelan assets (in the UK and Delaware); litigation involving an attempt to enforce claims relating to Ukraine debt by a trustee of a bond issue acting on behalf of Russia; and litigation considering whether a branch of a US bank based in London could decline to make payments to a Libyan entity based on US sanctions measures prohibiting such payments. Most of these cases raise questions about English courts’ role with respect to London as a financial center. But the cases also raise some more general issues about the role of courts in assessing the validity of acts of sovereigns and those who claim to have the authority to exercise sovereign power.
Asynchronous lectures: Standard Forms (as I mentioned in class audio was recorded in 2021); Collective Action Clauses
Meanwhile, the question of head of state immunity (not directly raised by the course materials, but related to the sovereign immunity material and also relevant to our initial focus on corruption) was raised in class the other day.If this is an issue you are interested in thinking about there is a recent article you may enjoy (not required reading): Diego A. Zambrano, Foreign Dictators in U.S. Court, 89 U. Chi. L. Rev. 157 (2022).
These are not assigned readings (yet) but here are links to:
Canadian Emergency Economic Measures Order
Executive Order Protecting Certain Property of Da Afghanistan Bank for the Benefit of the People of Afghanistan
Executive Order Blocking Property Of Certain Persons And Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect To Continued Russian Efforts To Undermine The Sovereignty And Territorial Integrity Of Ukraine (with General Licences you can find here)
Week 5 (Class February 16, 2022)
International Finance: Sovereigns 2
ICMA Collective Action Clauses
If you are interested in Argentina’s 2020 restructuring you might enjoy: Andres de la Cruz & Ignacio Lagos, CACs at Work: What Next? (December 10, 2020) {this is not required reading for class).
Asynchronous lectures on sovereigns: International Finance: Pari passu; International Finance: Sovereign Debt Issues
Note on the Lugano Convention (Feb. 9, 2022): Here is a link to an article explaining that the UK failed to get agreement to its joining the Lugano Convention last year with implications both for jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments. The article points out that the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments will take a long time to come into force, and also that arbitration may look more attractive in many situations because it is not affected by Brexit.
Week 4 (Class February 9, 2022) In week 3 we looked at securities fraud litigation as one context where the interests of different jurisdictions seem to collide, and where there are questions about the applicability of law, or the standing of certain claimants to bring claims, with respect to transactions seen as not sufficiently domestic. But the post Morrison cases show that distinguishing domestic transactions from foreign transactions is complicated. It’s a normal issue of line drawing, but in this case involving geography.
As we move on to the topic of sovereign debt, one of the issues we will see is whether litigation over sovereign debt, brought by purchasers of the debt, is inappropriate, and prohibited by the law of the forum where the litigation is occurring (New York).
Reading for Week 4: International Finance: Sovereigns 1
Reading Assignment for Week 3 (Class on February 2): International Finance Materials Chapter 2: Transnational Investment in Securities
Asynchronous lectures for week 3: Transnational Investment in Securities 1 Transnational Investment in Securities 2
Wednesday January 19: I enjoyed our class this morning. I have now moved this week’s reading assignment to the archive page (I will probably usually do this on Thursdays in future), and I have added below the reading assignment for next week (and it also appears on the materials page). In class next week I would like to begin with an important issue we did not get to this week, and raised by the readings, which is why lawyers and other professionals facilitate or protect corruption. I will add some narrated powerpoint material on the corruption readings and also some on next week’s readings. You will be able to find those here, probably on Friday.
Week 2 (Jan. 26 class session ) Reading Assignment: International Finance Chapter 1: Introduction
Lectures for week 2: International Finance: Corruption ; Chapter 1: Introduction (Financial Regulation and Harmonization)
For the first week of class we will study some material on corruption. Here are the readings:
The White House, United States Strategy on Countering Corruption (Dec. 2021)
John Heathershaw, Alexander Cooley, Tom Mayne, Casey Michel, Tena Prelec, Jason Sharman and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem: How Servicing Post-soviet Elites Weakens the Rule of Law, Chatham House Research Paper (Dec. 2021)
OECD, Recommendation of the Council for Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (2009, amended 2021).
Here are the Class Policies