On the Historicity of Financial Crime

The Origins of Modern Financial Crime: Historical foundations and current problems in Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) provides a multidisciplinary analysis of ‘the problem’ of financial crime in the ‘commercial sphere’ in Britain. 

It reflects the longstanding view that the challenges presented by financial crime, which are both enforcement and perceptually oriented, as they are understood by academic scholars and also practitioners and regulators and policymakers, merit an analysis drawing on contributions from many academic disciplines. 

In drawing extensively on legal and criminological approaches, the text centrally also highlights the benefits which can emanate from historicising the ‘problem’ of financial crime. And in doing so this analysis of financial crime also constitutes an entreaty for encouraging legal scholarship to engage more comprehensively with historical enquiry and analysis. 

This is a joint event with the UCL Centre for Criminal Law.

Speaker 

Dr Sarah Wilson, University of York

Chair 

Dr Iris Chiu, UCL

Commentator 

Emeritus Professor Ian Dennis, UCL

Accreditation 

1 CPD hour SRA (BSB pending)

About the speaker

Sarah has published widely in the sphere of Financial Crime and wider Financial/Banking law and regulation. In addition to her monograph recent articles include (with G Wilson) ‘The FSA, “credible deterrence”, and criminal enforcement - a “haphazard pursuit”?’ (2014) 21(1) J Financial Crime; ‘Criminal responses and financial misconduct in 21st century Britain: tradition and points of departure, and the significance of the conscious past’ (2013) 3(3) Law, Crime and History, 1; and ‘The pursuit of “socially useful banking” in twenty-first century Britain and exploring Victorian interactions between law, religion and financial marketplace values’ (2013) 22 Nottingham Law Journal 53, and Sarah has written ‘From the Mid-Nineteenth Century Bank Failures in the UK to the Twenty-First Century Financial Policy Committee – Changing Views of Responsibility for Systemic Stability’ together with TT Arvind (Newcastle) and Joanna Gray (Birmingham), which is to be published in R Michie, et al (eds) Complexity, Crisis and the Evolution of the Financial System: Critical Perspectives on American and British Banking (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2015, forthcoming). Sarah has also been a Consultant Editor for Lloyd’s Law Reports on Financial Crime since 2011, and has written commentaries on numerous UK decisions (both administrative/civil and criminal) as well as many overseas developments for the International Section of this publication.

Sarah has recently presented at a seminar in Trier organised by the Academy of European Law on Financial Crimes: Countering Insider Dealing and Market Manipulation, designed to provide an analysis of recent legal developments at EU and international levels in countering criminal offences in capital markets, and in February 2015 she is participating in a key Bank of England seminar series, where she is speaking on the regulatory significance of Northern Rock. During 2013-14 Sarah’s speaking invitations included: ‘Financial Crises and Financial Crime: “transformative understandings of crime, past, present and future’, Financial Crises and Financial Crime: a conference bringing together academic, practitioner and regulators, UWE, UK, July 2014; ‘Bankers and Criminal Liability in the Post-Crisis Regulatory Environment: A tale of two elites, past present and future’ SLS Annual Conference (Legal History section) University of Nottingham, September 2014 (personal invitation from section Convenor); with TT Arvind and J Gray ‘Financial Elites, Past, Present and Future’, Financial Elites in Historical Perspective, EUI, Florence, Italy. In keeping with the current theme, Sarah was also an invited speaker at Economic Crime and the State in the Twentieth Century: A German–American Comparison, German Institute of Historical Research, Washington DC April 2011.