Building an EU Securities Market

This book considers some of the fundamental issues concerning the legal framework that has been established to support a single EU securities market. It focuses particularly on how the emerging legal framework will affect issuers' access to the primary and secondary market. The Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP, 1999) was an attempt to equip the community better to meet the challenges of monetary union and to capitalise on the potential benefits of a single market in financial services. It led to extensive change in securities market regulation: new laws; new law making processes, and more attention to the mechanisms for the supervision of securities market activity and legal enforcement. With the FSAP nearing completion, it is a good time to take stock of what has been achieved, and to identify the challenges that lie ahead.

1. Overview and introduction to terminology; 2. Law's role in the building of an integrated EU securities market; 3. The regulatory process for securities law-making in the EU; 4. The centrality of disclosure as a regulatory strategy; 5. Issuer disclosure; 6. Institutional supervision of issuer disclosure within the EU; 7. Regulatory competencies: the end of exchange-based regulation and supervision of issuers in the EU?

The essays in this book consider some of the fundamental issues concerning the legal framework that has been established to support a single EU securities market. EU policymakers have relied heavily on law reform as a primary building tool. This book examines the wisdom of this strategic policy choice.

EILÍS FERRAN is a reader in the Law Faculty, University of Cambidge, specialising in corporate and securities law. She was the Director of the Faculty's Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law. She is the author of Company Law and Corporate Finance (1999), and of various articles on corporate law, securities law and financial regulation and is an editor of the Journal of Corporate Law Studies. In 2000 she was a special adviser to the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Financial Services and Market Bill, and more recently has advised the UK Department of Trade and Industry on the Company Law Reform Project. Dr Ferran is a graduate (MA and PHD) of Cambridge University and is a qualified solicitor.