eu depositor protection proposals and the uk parliament November 25, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , comments closedThe UK House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee has been considering the proposed directive on depositor protection which has been put forward on the basis of limited consultation. The Committee had some issues:
we …understand why it is felt necessary to push through this draft Directive speedily, even without a proper impact assessment and public consultation. Nevertheless we are concerned that the rush should not lead to ill-considered and flawed legislation. Moreover we note that:
• the Government has a number of practical questions to which it needs answers; and
• it seems implicit in the Minister’s comments about the balance between the responsibilities of the Commission, the Council and Member States that the Government is not convinced about the Lamfalussy process arrangements in the present text of the draft Directive.. So we recommend that this document …should be debated in European Committee
sound regulation November 17, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , comments closedThe G20 declaration contains a call for “sound regulation”:
We pledge to strengthen our regulatory regimes, prudential oversight, and risk management, and ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate to their circumstances. We will exercise strong oversight over credit rating agencies, consistent with the agreed and strengthened international code of conduct. We will also make regulatory regimes more effective over the economic cycle, while ensuring that regulation is efficient, does not stifle innovation, and encourages expanded trade in financial products and services. We commit to transparent assessments of our national regulatory systems.
It remains to be seen whether sound regulation is in fact sound (better regulation pretty clearly wasn’t in fact better).
trusts and choice of law November 2, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : conflicts , comments closedIn Jose Gonzalez Gomez V Encarnacion Gomez-Monche Vives (Court of Appeal Oct. 3, 2008) the Court of Appeal was faced with figuring out the domicile of a trust for the purposes of Article 5(6) of the Jurisdiction and Judgments Regulation which provides that:
A person domiciled in a Member State may, in another Member State, be sued… as settlor, trustee or beneficiary of a trust created by the operation of a statute, or by a written instrument, or created orally and evidenced in writing, in the courts of the Member State in which the trust is domiciled
The trust in question was established under a declaration of trust by a Jersey corporation (specifying English law as the proper law), the settlor was a Spanish domiciliary, the main assets were shares in a corporation incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and the trust was administered in Liechtenstein. At the time of the litigation the trustees were corporations incorporated in BVI and Liechtenstein. The only connection with England was the choice of English law as the proper law.
Lord Justice Lawrence Collins says that other factors are not to be taken into account where there is an express choice of English law. Choice of law with respect to trusts is different from choice of law with respect to contracts:
The connection between a trust and its proper law is in every sense real and close. A trust is not like a commercial contract where it is only necessary to consider the content of the applicable law in exceptional circumstances. trustees in particular have to be intimately aware of their responsibilities under the general law applicable to the trust. They may have to know whether they can lawfully accumulate income. Resort to the law governing the trust is central to their responsibilities.
But the Lord Justice also states that a choice of foreign law to govern a trust which would otherwise be governed by English law might be treated differently!