This new edition provides the most comprehensive analysis of the regulation and operation of the securities markets in Europe.

No one doubts any longer that sustainable development is a normative imperative. Yet there is unmistakably a great reluctance to acknowledge any legal basis upon which companies are obliged to forgo 'shareholder value' when such a policy clearly dilutes responsibility for company action in the face of continuing environmental degradation. Here is a book that boldly says: 'Shareholder primacy' is wrong. Such a narrow, short-term focus, the author shows, works against the achievement of the overarching societal goals of European law itself. The core role of EU company and securities law is to promote economic development, notably through the facilitation of market integration, while its contributory role is to further sustainable development through facilitation of the integration of economic and social development and environmental protection. There is a clear legal basis in European law to overturn the poorly substantiated theory of a 'market for corporate control' as a theoretical and ideological basis when enacting company law. With rigorous and persuasive research and analysis, this book demonstrates that: European companies should have legal obligations beyond the maximization of profit for shareholders; human and environmental interests may and should be engaged with in the realm of company law; and company law has a crucial role in furthering sustainable development. As a test case, the author offers an in-depth analysis of the Takeover Directive, showing that it neither promotes economic development nor furthers the integration of the economic, social and environmental interests that the principle of sustainable development requires. This book goes to the very core of the ongoing debate on the function and future of European company law. Surprisingly, it does not make an argument in favour of changing EU law, but shows that we can take a great leap forward from where we are. For this powerful insight - and the innumerable recognitions that support it - this book is a timely and exciting new resource for lawyers and academics in 'both camps' those on the activist side of the issue, and those with company or official policymaking responsibilities.

Pierre Schammo provides a detailed analysis of EU prospectus law (and the 2010 amendments to the Prospectus Directive) and assesses the new rules governing the European Securities and Markets Authority, including the case law on the delegation of powers to regulatory agencies. In a departure from previous work on securities regulation, the focus is on EU decision-making in the securities field. He examines the EU's approach to prospectus disclosure enforcement and its implementation at Member State level and breaks new ground on regulatory competition in the securities field by providing a 'law-in-context' analysis of the negotiations of the Prospectus Directive.

Over the decade or so since the global financial crisis rocked EU financial markets and led to wide-ranging reforms, EU securities and financial markets regulation has continued to evolve. The legislative framework has been refined and administrative rulemaking has expanded. Alongside, the Capital Markets Union agenda has developed, the UK has left the EU, and ESMA has emerged as a decisive influence on EU financial markets governance. All these developments, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, have shaped the regulatory landscape and how supervision is organized. EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation provides a comprehensive, critical, and contextual account of the intricate rulebook that governs EU financial markets and its supporting institutional arrangements. It is framed by an assessment of how the regime has evolved over the decade or so since the global financial crisis and considers, among other matters, the post-crisis reforms to key legislative measures, the massive expansion of administrative rulemaking and of soft law, the Capital Markets Union agenda, the development of supervisory convergence as the means for organizing pan-EU supervision, and ESMA's role in EU financial markets governance. Its coverage extends from capital-raising and the Prospectus Regulation to financial market intermediation and the MiFID II/MiFIR and IFD/IFR regimes, to the new regulatory regimes adopted since the global financial crisis (including for benchmarks and their administrators), to retail market regulation and the PRIIPs Regulation, and on to the EU's third country regime and the implications of the UK's departure from the EU. This is the fourth edition of the highly successful and authoritative monograph first published as EC Securities Regulation. Heavily revised from the third edition to reflect developments since the global financial crisis, it adopts the in-depth contextual and analytical approach of earlier editions and so considers the market, political, institutional, and international context of the regulatory and supervisory regime.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} This comprehensive Research Handbook analyses and explains the EU’s complex system of economic governance from a legal point of view and looks ahead to the challenges it faces and how these can be resolved. Bringing together contributions from leading academics and top lawyers from EU institutions, this Research Handbook is the first to cover all aspects of the Eurozone’s legal ecosystem, and offers an up-to-date and in depth assessment of the norms and procedures that underpin the EU’s economic, monetary, banking, and capital markets unions.

Global finance is in the middle of a radical transformation fueled by innovative financial technologies. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of retail financial services in Europe. Institutional interest and digital asset markets are also growing blurring the boundaries between the token economy and traditional finance. Blockchain, AI, quantum computing and decentralised finance (DeFI) are setting the stage for a global battle of business models and philosophies. The post-Brexit EU cannot afford to ignore the promise of digital finance. But the Union is struggling to keep pace with global innovation hubs, particularly when it comes to experimenting with new digital forms of capital raising. Calibrating the EU digital finance strategy is a balancing act that requires a deep understanding of the factors driving the transformation, be they legal, cultural, political or economic, as well as their many implications. The same FinTech inventions that use AI, machine learning and big data to facilitate access to credit may also establish invisible barriers that further social, racial and religious exclusion. The way digital finance actors source, use, and record information presents countless consumer protection concerns. The EU’s strategic response has been years in the making and, finally, in September 2020 the Commission released a Digital Finance Package. This special issue collects contributions from leading scholars who scrutinize the challenges digital finance presents for the EU internal market and financial market regulation from multiple public policy perspectives. Author contributions adopt a critical yet constructive and solutions-oriented approach. They aim to provide policy-relevant research and ideas shedding light on the complexities of the digital finance promise. They also offer solid proposals for reform of EU financial services law.

Despite western Europe's traditional disdain for the United States' "adversarial legalism," the European Union is shifting toward a very similar approach to the law, according to Daniel Kelemen. Coining the term "eurolegalism" to describe the hybrid that is now developing in Europe, he shows how the political and organizational realities of the EU make this shift inevitable. The model of regulatory law that had long predominated in western Europe was more informal and cooperative than its American counterpart. It relied less on lawyers, courts, and private enforcement, and more on opaque networks of bureaucrats and other interests that developed and implemented regulatory policies in concert. European regulators chose flexible, informal means of achieving their objectives, and counted on the courts to challenge their decisions only rarely. Regulation through litigation-central to the U.S. model-was largely absent in Europe. But that changed with the advent of the European Union. Kelemen argues that the EU's fragmented institutional structure and the priority it has put on market integration have generated political incentives and functional pressures that have moved EU policymakers to enact detailed, transparent, judicially enforceable rules-often framed as "rights"-and back them with public enforcement litigation as well as enhanced opportunities for private litigation by individuals, interest groups, and firms.

This timely book explores pertinent questions around the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU agencies’ soft law, with a particular focus on the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). It examines the variety of ESMA’s existing and newly granted soft law-making powers, which were intended to deal with the lack of effectiveness of its predecessor but are now called into question due to the ‘hard’ effect of these soft laws.

Europe has known very different systems of company laws for a long time. These differences do not only pertain to the board structures of public companies, where single-tier and two-tier structures can be distinguished, they also pertain to the principles of fixed legal capital. Fixed legal capital is not a traditional ingredient of English and Irish company law and had to be incorpo-rated into these legal systems (only) for public limited companies according to the Second European Company Law Directive of 1976. Both jurisdictions have never really embraced these rules. Against this background, the British Accounting Standards Board (ASB) and the Company Law Centre at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) have initiated and supported a study of the benefits of this legal system by a group of experts led by Jonathan Rickford. The report of this group has been published in 2004. Its result was that legal capital was costly and superfluous; hence, the Second Directive should be repealed. The British government has adopted this view and wants the European Commission to act accordingly. Against this background a group of German and European company law experts, academics as well as practitioners, have come together to scrutinise sense and benefits of fixed legal capital and all its specific elements guided by the following questions: What is the relevant legal concept supposed to achieve? What does it achieve in reality? What criticisms are there? Which proposals or alternatives are available? From the outset the group of experts has endeavoured to cooperate with foreign colleagues, which resulted in very fruitful and pleasant exchanges. This volume contains, besides an executive summary of the results, 16 essays on specific aspects of legal capital in Germany covering also neighbouring fields of law (e.g. accounting, insolvency);7 reports on fixed legal capital in other jurisdictions (France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.S.A.) addressing the same questions as the essays on German law. The British initiative disapproves of the Second Directive. The Directive does only deal with public limited companies in Europe, which is reflected in the analysis presented here. It is only concerned with the fixed legal capital of public limited companies, not with capital issues of private companies. The study has arrived at a result that differs completely from that of the Rickford group. It verifies the usefulness of the concept of fixed legal capital and wishes to convince the European Commission of the benefits of the Second Company Law Directive.