International Securities Law concerns the regulation of cross-border capital-raising transactions. It considers issues including the offering of securities to investors outside an issuer’s home country. Additionally, the disclosures required of an issuer whose shares are held by investors outside its home country, the extra-territorial reach of nationally based anti-fraud regimes, tender offers across national lines, the differences in the regulation of insider trading and market manipulation, and broker-dealer activities involving transnational transactions.

In the global economy, complex relationships create a shifting legal landscape for businesses. This is especially among boards, banks, investors, management, and other stakeholders. International Securities Law demands lawyers who are agile advisers, strategists, dealmakers, and problem-solvers.

The long–established ‘legacy’ stock exchanges of many leading jurisdictions have undergone rapid and profound structural changes since the early–1990s. In many cases  radical shifts in control and ownership follow.  The exchange’s direct or delegated regulatory responsibilities, new commercial objectives, and in heightened competition for sources of revenue with private ‘dark pools’ and other trading platforms, as well as with overseas exchanges.

International Securities Law Task

Write a critical appraisal of how these developments affect both users of exchanges and parties. With indirect interests in the exchange’s operations, and consider whether they risk being incompatible with applicable corporate law or governance doctrines, lead to differences in the treatment of users, or produce irregularities in applicable financial regulation?

You do not have to confine your analysis to any single jurisdiction. However, you must provide International Securities Law examples only where legacy exchanges have undergone significant recent commercial, organizational, constitutional, and regulatory changes.

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