Online | Regulating Digital and Crypto-finance: A Conversation Across Borders

A UCL Centre for Ethics and Law Lunchtime Panel

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Online | Regulating Digital and Crypto-finance: A Conversation Across Borders

22 Mar 2022, 12:00 – 13:30

22 March 2022 from 12:00 - 13:30 (London)
on Zoom Webinar

About the talk

This panel brings together a number of experts to discuss the different reform agendas that may be pursued in different jurisdictions relating to crypto-finance and digital finance innovations more broadly. The Australian reform agenda appears to be holistic in nature, covering the business aspects of blockchain-based commerce as well as crypto-assets and finance, while promoting a modernised framework for digital financial innovations more broadly. The European proposal, in the form of the Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCAR) seems more limited although it is targeted at the potential systemic qualities of global stablecoins. Our speakers will discuss critically these reform agendas with a comparative bent, and offer insights into how regulatory policy in this area should be designed.

The speakers:

Nick Bertram, Legal Counsel, Financial Conduct Authority
Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL Faculty of Laws
(Chair of panel)
Andrew Godwin, Principal Fellow, Melbourne Law School; Special Counsel, Australian Law Reform Commission
Philipp Maume, Professor in Corporate Governance & Capital Markets Law, TUM School of Management at Technical University of Munich

About the Panelists

Nick Bertram, Legal Counsel, Financial Conduct Authority
Nick is the manager of the Wholesale and Perimeter Team in the General Counsel’s Division of the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK financial conduct regulator. Nick has worked at the financial regulator since 2004, and before that he was a lawyer in the London office of Sidley Austin, the US law firm. Nick’s team are the legal leads at the FCA on crypto-asset and DLT related issues which impact financial services and markets, and he is heavily involved in working with colleagues across the FCA and with other stakeholders such as HM Treasury and the Bank of England in developing the UK’s regulatory approach towards crypto-assets and DLT. Nick will be attending the Panel in a personal capacity.

Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL Faculty of Laws
(Chair of panel)
Iris is Director of the UCL Centre of Ethics and Law which advances public and stakeholder engagement in relation to a wide range of issues in relation to law, regulation, governance and ethics in business and finance. She has published extensively in the areas of corporate governance and financial regulation, including The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism (2010), The Legal Framework for Internal Control in Banks and Financial Institutions (2015), Investment Management and Corporate Governance (2017), Banking Law and Regulation (2019), The Law and Governance of Decentralised Business Models (2020) and Regulating the Crypto-Economy (2021). She is a Research Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and a member of its Editorial Board. She has also been appointed as Senior Scholar at the European Central Bank’s Legal Research Programme (2020).

Andrew Godwin, Principal Fellow, Melbourne Law School; Special Counsel, Australian Law Reform Commission
Andrew previously spent 15 years as an academic at Melbourne Law School (2006 – 2021) and 15 years in practice (1992 – 2006), 10 of which were spent as a foreign lawyers in Shanghai. Andrew’s research interests include financial services law, finance and insolvency law, financial regulation, property law and the regulation of the legal profession. Books that he has published as an author or editor include The Cambridge Handbook of Twin Peaks Financial Regulation (2021), Technology and Corporate Law: How Innovation Shapes Corporate Activity (2021), Sackville & Neave Australian Property Law (11th edition, 2021) and Research Handbook on Asian Financial Law (2020). Andrew acts as a consultant to a broad range of organisations, including the World Bank and regulators and governments in Australia and abroad. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and one of Australia’s representatives on the Advisory Board of the Asian Business Law Institute.

Philipp Maume, Professor in Corporate Governance & Capital Markets Law, TUM School of Management at Technical University of Munich
Philipp is a professor of law at Technical University of Munich, specialising in the intersection of financial markets law and technology. He has published extensively on the regulation of crypto assets, robo-advisors, crowdfunding, and the digitization of company law. In these areas, he is also a consultant for the German Government and the European Parliament. Philipp is the main editor of a German law journal on banking law (BKR) and a founding editor of the German journal of the law of family firms (RFamU). He has also edited two research handbooks on crypto assets, and is currently working on a commentary on the MiCA Regulation.