Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
After many years of attempting to explain the need for two kinds of lawyer in the United Kingdom to exasperated and confused European colleagues – and even US ones – I have lighted on the following language. Solicitors are a primary market of legal services. They are profit-sharing organisations in which senior lawyers manage teams of junior lawyers to do almost everything their clients want.
The European continent operates a legal system derived from the Napoleonic Code, first enacted in 1804. Napoleon was, I venture to point out, and without meaning to be too critical, a revolutionary dictator. He gathered four eminent jurists together and, as dictators are wont to do, ordered that they produce an all-encompassing system of law for his judges to administer to the nation. .
The retail side of banks’ business culture is of particular political significance; public disapproval of wholesale and shadow banking behaviour flow less readily into voter intentions. It is through the prism of experience of retail banking that politicians and the public believe themselves to be afforded insight into banks’ failure in these more remote areas
After the fall of the Berlin wall and before the collapse of Lehman, the political mood was such that banks were able to persuade the world that high levels of profit and remuneration were justified: the banks told the world that their industry had a key role in wealth-creation.
Hedge funds and other investment funds are emerging as sophisticated litigators, viewing litigation as an asset, which can create value and mitigate risk, rather than something to be avoided or feared. As a consequence, both the market and various legal systems are being disciplined and developed. How and why is this happening? Willing to litigate relentlessly and fearlessly, hedge funds will seek out and find gaps in documents and uncertainties in the law, and exploit them with ruthless efficiency, entering new legal territory and pushing the boundary of legal theories.
Imagine you’ve been on an out-of-town business trip. Your employer paid for your airfare, but allowed you to keep the frequent flyer points generated by the trip. Some time later, you redeem the points (perhaps along with additional points generated by other business trips) for a free flight to a vacation destination.
There are many mechanisms for raising capital — debt, derivatives, equity, high yield products, securitization, and repackaging – which fund and drive fund the economy. But as international financial markets move and shift as the world changes, regulations and legal frameworks must also adapt rapidly.
By Alexandros Apostolides
Cyprus was not on the agenda of most analysts as the next plot twist in the Eurozone Sovereign debt saga. Although the island nation has been locked out of international capital markets since May 2011, the government of President Demetris Christophias only asked for support from the Eurogroup on 25 July 2012.
By Muti Gulati
It is perhaps natural human tendency to think that the big events that occur during our lifetimes — particularly if they involve us personally — are both unique and will change the course of history. Reality though is that most of us aren’t particularly good at predicting what future historians will consider important.