Financial Market Infrastructures: The International Approach and the Current Challenges

ABSTRACT:

This chapter analyses the global initiatives for coordination of financial market infrastructure regulation that have emerged since the 1990s, reflecting on both the European and the American perspectives. It begins by looking at the different approaches that authorities can take in tackling cross-border phenomena. Finding the right balance between securing national interests and engaging in international relationships is a delicate process: in international financial regulation, authorities can claim extraterritorial application of their domestic regime to keep control of the market and minimize the opportunities of regulatory arbitrage; but they can also try to contain opportunities for regulatory arbitrage by engaging in harmonization and coordination with other countries. The chapter then discusses the dynamics of the European Union and United States relationship and the approaches embraced by the two jurisdictions in regulating and overseeing derivatives clearinghouses in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. It also examines Brexit and considers the severe challenges that the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the EU will have to the markets, before offering a snapshot of the challenges that financial technology is posing to the existing delicate cross-border regulatory equilibrium.