Securities and Financial Services Regulation - LAWS2041

 
Faculty: Faculty of Law
 
 
School:  Faculty of Law
 
 
Course Outline: See below
 
 
Campus: Kensington Campus
 
 
Career: Undergraduate
 
 
Units of Credit: 8
 
 
EFTSL: 0.16667 (more info)
 
 
Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 4
 
 
Enrolment Requirements:
 
 
Prerequisite: LAWS1001, LAWS1011; or LAWS1610; Corequisite: LAWS2311 or LAWS1010.
 
 
Fee Band: 3 (more info)
 
 
Further Information: See Class Timetable
 
 

Description


The course considers the main techniques of financial regulation: disclosure, licensing, prohibitions of market misconduct, self regulation and powers of investigation and enforcement. It considers the rules and practices constituting financial regulation, the market institutions and regulatory context in which it operates and the additional insights we gain from contemporary regulatory studies. The course tackles current issues in financial regulation such as the impact on law of product and market convergence, intermediary conglomeration, globalization, use of computer and telecommunications and responses to recent ethical failures in financial services.


Recommended Prior Knowledge


None

Course Objectives


1. To study the regulation of securities and financial products and markets by considering the institutions and context in which the markets operate.

2. To understand the policy reasons for regulation, the main regulatory techniques adopted (e.g. disclosure, licensing, powers of investigation and enforcement) and the issues of law and policy raised by the approaches adopted; to appreciate the strengths and limits of particular legal rules and associated practices used in financial regulation.

3. To enrich the study of relevant regulatory rules and policy by the introduction of inter-disciplinary material eg from financial economics the contribution of the efficient markets hypothesis to the regulation of disclosure; from sociology of law literature on styles of regulation and enforcement.

4. To acquire facility with the complex statutory materials and policy which govern financial markets and experience in treating the regulation as primarily a system of statutory and administrative rules as much as judge-made law.

Main Topics


  • Institutions and sources of Australian financial regulation;
  • The nature and effect of regulation and the main theoretical perspectives on regulation;
  • What are we regulating: financial products, financial markets and financial services;
  • Prospectus and retail disclosure;
  • Licensing of financial markets and intermediaries;
  • Customer agreements: traditional advisory and with online brokers;
  • Market manipulation;
  • Regulator's remedies: criminal, civil penalties and enforceable undertakings;
  • Plaintiff's remedies: curial actions, industry based dispute resolution;
  • Financial regulation in future.

Assessment


Market visit report - 10%
Class participation - 10%
Compulsory research essay question - 40%
Open book exam - 40%

Course Texts


Prescribed

  • Corporations Act 2001, 2006 edition.
  • Baxt R, Black A, Hanrahan P, Securities and Financial Services Law (Butterworths, 2003).
  • Collection of reading materials for this course.

Recommended
Refer to Course Outline provided by lecturer.