This chapter first introduces the regulation of financial services. It puts the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000) into context and explains the need for authorisation under the Act. It considers what is covered by the general prohibition as well as the meanings of ‘regulated activity’ and ‘specified investment’. The chapter then discusses the position of solicitors, specifically those who are regulated by the Law Society, a designated professional body. The FSMA 2000 has been amended by the Financial Services Act 2012. This introduced changes to the regulation of financial services, including the renaming of the Financial Services Authority as the Financial Conduct Authority.
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Clare Firth, Jennifer Seymour, Lucy Crompton, Helen Fox, Frances Seabridge, Jennifer Seymour, and Elizabeth Smart
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Part V of this text looked at the rules relating to corporate finance and transparency. An important justification for corporate disclosure is the need to ensure that sufficient information is publicly available, so that a company’s securities can be accurately priced. Certain persons may seek to benefit from non-publicly available information to benefit themselves or engage in conduct designed to manipulate a company’s share price. This additional online chapter discusses the law’s response to this issue by discussing the offence of insider dealing, the market abuse regime, and the offences relating to financial services.
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Ross Cranston, Emilios Avgouleas, Kristin van Zweiten, Theodor van Sante, and Christoper Hare
This chapter discusses banking supervision in practice. It focuses on two jurisdictions: the UK and the European Banking Union (EBU), and considers in particular the type of powers enjoyed by the UK and EBU regulators, and the way they exercise them in their supervisory approaches. In the process the chapter highlights loopholes in the respective regimes and to some extent evaluates their effectiveness. On 1 April 2013 the Financial Services Act 2012 came into force, removing the Financial Services Authority and delivering a new regulatory structure for the UK, which comprises the Prudential Regulation Authority responsible for microprudential regulation and supervision of banks, building societies, and investment firms; and the Financial Conduct Authority, in addition to a financial stability (macroprudential) body within the Bank of England, the Financial Policy Committee. The EBU brought about the centralization of bank supervision and resolution within the Eurozone. The trigger for the establishment of the EBU was the Eurozone debt crisis.
