Financing outside traditional sources: online lending, equity crowdfunding and virtual currencies

Speaker: Professor Edward F Green (Columbia Law School)
Chair: Dr Iris Chiu (University College London)

About the talk

This lecture deals with the latest US and UK regulatory frameworks for novel forms of financing that fall within the ‘shadow banking’ perimeter. Online P2P lending and equity crowdfunding have become popular destinations of choice for small business fund-raising, but issues with respect to transparency, standardisation and investor protection persist. This lecture will provide an overview of market needs and the emerging regulatory regimes.

About the speaker

Edward F. Greene, Senior Counsel, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP; Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Scholar, Columbia Law School.

Edward F. Greene, senior counsel at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. As a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School, among the courses he teaches are International Securities Regulation and Issues on Global Regulatory Reform. Mr. Greene also serves as co-director for Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets, a joint initiative of Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School.

Mr. Greene joined Cleary Gottlieb in 1982 as partner after leaving the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (where he had served first as director of the Division of Corporate Finance and then as general counsel). During his tenure at the firm, he has practiced out of the firm’s New York, Washington, Tokyo and London offices, and was the first licensed foreign lawyer to be admitted to practice law in Japan in 1987.

From 1995 through 2001, Mr. Greene served as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Legal Advisory Board. He joined Citigroup in 2004 as general counsel for its institutional clients group. In 2009, he returned to Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as partner.

Mr. Greene has been recognized as one of the best capital markets lawyers by Chambers Global. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an LL.B from Harvard University.