Philip R Wood

This book describes the key advantages and risks involved in the choice of law governing international business and financial transactions, plus the accompanying choice of courts. Beginning with an analysis of the role of law in social infrastructure, the work outlines the economic value and power of governing law. It concentrates predominantly on financial, corporate, commercial, and insolvency law across a vast comparative basis, discussing how legal risk can be reduced through careful choice of law and courts. In Governing Law Risks in International Business Transactions, Philip R. Wood proposes 70 key indicators to rank the England, New York, France, and German legal systems plus many other jurisdictions on 13 risk tests. These include contract predictability, business orientation, freedom of contract, insolvency regimes, corporate law, regulatory law, courts, litigation, and other factors. The book considers all 320 jurisdictions of the world and shows how to understand them by locating them in eight families of law, each with their own features. The book explains not only choice of law principles but sets out the factors to consider the commercial and legal implications of choosing one law over another in business contracts, and is an essential resource for all commercial lawyers.

On August 29–30 2014 the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation in co-operation with the Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law arranged an International legal symposium under the heading “Functional or dysfunctional – the law as a cure? Risks and liability in the financial markets”. The symposium was held in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation. The topic of the symposium mirrors a particular interest of the activities of the SCCL covering regulatory as well as liability questions thus dealing with legal subjects which have also relevance to the Foundation. After World War II financial markets have gradually undergone huge differences depending on new financial devices, new financial markets and new financial actors evolving together with changes in regulation and supervision. These are circumstances which have together created new frames for the financial industry. Table of contents: - Extraterritorial Financial Regulation: Why E.T. Can’t Come Home by John C. Coffee, Jr. - Generally on Risks and Liability – Directors’ Liability Under the Law and Regulation in Australia by Rowan Russell - South African Company Law – Directors’ Duty of Care and Skill and the Introduction of the Business Judgment Rule: Answering the Critics by Angela Itzikowitz - International legal risk for banks and corporates by Philip R Wood - Macro-prudential regulation from an English and European Perspective – The Legal and Institutional Dimension by Kern Alexander - Comment on the session on the risks and liabilities of financial markets by Jesper Lau Hansen - Handling Risks in Financial Markets Regulation: EMIR and the problem with CCPs being Too Big to Fail by Erica Johansson - Responsibility of Banks and Their Directors, Including Liability and Enforcement by Klaus J. Hopt - Is there a role for culture and ethics in financial regulation? By William Blair - Tort Law to the Rescue? By Michael D. Green & Brandon Jones - The (non)-liability of banks under English law by Ross Cranston - Implementing liability on the basis of model case procedures – the example of the German Capital Markets Model Case Act (“KapMuG”) by Brigitte Haar - Tort cases in Iceland after the bank crash in 2008 by Eiríkur Jónsson

Topics covered in this book include: jurisdictions of the world, principles of world insolvency law, bank term loans and syndicated credits, international bond issues and capital markets, trusts in financial transactions, set-off and netting, payment and securities clearing systems, and security interests and title finance.