Legal and Conduct Risk in the Financial Markets

This is the third edition of the only work to focus on the topic of legal risk, expanded in this edition to include much new material specifically on conduct risk. The book has been updated to take into account developments in the law and professional standards concerning such risks and associated values in the context of the financial markets.Significant (and in some cases, endemic) conduct-related scandals, such as the widespread mis-selling of financial products and LIBOR manipulation, exposed (even precipitated) by the Financial Crisis, have resulted in legal and regulatory change in equal measure (and profound effect) to that of the prudential and financial stability concerns captured in the second edition. Consequently this new edition fully examines the current approach to trust, ethics and conduct within the broader frameworkof reputational and legal risk. In doing so, it clarifies what constitutes legal risk in contemporary financial markets and how to manage it, drawing on examples and case studies.Other developments in areas such as the resolution/insolvency of banks, the revision of the UK regulatory structure from the FSA to the FCA and PRA, and the recently made new crime of reckless management of a bank are all considered in full. There is also discussion of trends in areas ripe for development such as fiduciary duty amongst financial markets participants.Combining practical emphasis with theoretical depth, this is an approachable and engaging reference guide to this important and evolving area of law.

Review from previous edition The first to wrestle legal risk to the floor, McCormick speaks in an eminently reassuring voice. Solicitors are problem solvers, and McCormick has engaged a (considerable) problem, observed its characteristics, mapped its watering holes, and made very sensible suggestions for keeping the beast at bay., The book enters a number of familiar doctrinal debates, including charge-backs, property interests in indirectly held securities, changes on book debts. The technical difficulty of these is so great, and the controversy surrounding them so intractable that, generally speaking, the more one reads, the more lost one becomes. McCormick's gift is...to see doctrine as a resource and not as a burden. He is able to pick out the few essential propositions, and suggest a sensible way forward (saving all of us a lot of time)., Of the many admirable qualities of the book, perhaps the most admirable is its approach. [...] What it does do is provide a toolkit using which (sic) both lawyers and non-lawyers can begin to approach each other and to develop a mutual understanding., The book is stimulating and informative. There is reference to almost every conceivable aspect of the recent financial crisis, from its origins to the legal and regulatory responses in the UK and elsewhere., This is essential reading for every banking and corporate lawyer and it is an absolute must for anyone involved in setting out rules or guidelines in the management of legal risk...Overall this book represents a significant contribution in this complex area of law.

Roger McCormick is a past Director of the Sustainable Finance Project at London School of Economics and Political Science, and a past Visiting Professor at LSE. He is now the Managing Director of CCP Research Foundation .He retired from full-time private legal practice in 2004, having practised law in the City of London for nearly thirty years. Chris Stears is a solicitor, a fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, Research Director at CCP Research Foundation, and principal and general counsel at Medius Consulting.