Sky Blog
The capstone of regulatory reform in the wake of the financial crisis can be characterized as an effort to change the financial industry by getting bankers to behave more ethically. Regulators have emphasized the importance of “culture” set by a …
Financial crises and corporate scandals like those involving Enron, Worldcom, or Fannie Mae have triggered increased academic research into the probability of stock price crashes. Stock price crashes have a material impact on investor welfare, and so are of interest …
Following the recommendations of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, most financial systems around the world have imposed new capital requirements for banks in recent years. These moves seem to be justified on two powerful economic grounds. First, better capitalized …
The 2008 financial crisis was catastrophic for the U.S. banking industry. Between 2007 and 2014, 510 banks failed. Another 700-plus banks received some type of federal monetary assistance. Unsurprisingly, this led to calls to hold bank directors and officers legally …
Attacks on the authority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (“FSOC”) to designate non-bank financial firms as systemically important, and thus subject to the Fed’s oversight, are misguided. [1] Such authority is essential to the long-term maintenance of financial stability, …
The Obama administration had a mixed record on white collar crime. On one hand, it extracted $4 billion and a guilty plea from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. On the other hand, it allowed HSBC, then …
Thank you for inviting me to speak here today (April 20).1 I will begin by looking back at the global financial crisis and the great recession, which were arriving on the horizon at about this time 10 years ago. …
One of the most elegant legal innovations to emerge from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 is the FDIC’s Single Point of Entry (SPOE) initiative, whereby regulatory authorities will be in a position to resolve …
The regulation of bank capital and liquidity has been in sharp focus ever since the financial crisis of 2008-09. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (“BCBS”) has led the work internationally to develop a revised set of capital and liquidity …
Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”) represents a singular development in U.S. resolution law. It provides a new regime, the so-called Orderly Liquidation Authority, for use in the event that a …
The syndicated loan market is one of the largest sources of financing for U.S. firms. This market has experienced tremendous growth over the past 20 years. In fact, some recent estimates suggest that U.S. firms obtain over $1 trillion in …
There are two established explanations for bank runs: coordination problems among depositors and information asymmetries between bank managers and depositors. In a new paper, “Information Gaps and Shadow Banking,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review and available here, I …
Attempts by U.S. federal officials to regulate corporate governance have been criticized by prominent scholars as “quackery.”[1] Major reforms like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank may in fact do far more harm than good. But what if these efforts at healing …
Today (November 16), we will consider the future of financial regulation and, more specifically, whether the Dodd-Frank Act went too far.[1]. I am I happy to share my views with you, but before I begin, I must give
In the aftermath of the most recent financial crisis, credit rating agencies (CRAs) once again received a portion of the blame. Similar to the negative CRA attention that followed the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and the dot.com bubble of …
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, after nearly four years as the agency’s head, today announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration. Under Chair White’s leadership, the Commission strengthened protections for investors …
Prior to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, global banks were big, broad and borderless. They operated as integrated groups. Separate legal entities within a group were an afterthought: The results that mattered were those for lines of …
Two major challenges have arisen for financial services companies since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. On the expense side, post-crisis fines have exceeded $200 billion, and the ongoing cost of regulation and compliance has become massive. On the …
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB” or “Bureau”) made headlines in FinTech on October 24, 2016. First, the Bureau released its first-ever Project Catalyst report on promoting consumer-friendly innovation (the “Report”). The Report summarizes the work conducted by Project …
There is an increasing worldwide focus on trying to end the problem of “too big to fail” (“TBTF”). Regulators are concerned that systemically important financial firms might engage in excessive risk-taking because they would profit from a success and be …