When: Monday, January 27, 2025, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PMWhere: Online via Zoom
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Part of the London Financial Regulation Seminars collection.
The London Financial Regulation Seminar is an inter-collegiate and inter-disciplinary group of experts led by CCLS and our Institute of Banking and Finance under the leadership of Professor Rosa M. Lastra and Dr. Daniele D’Alvia.
On Monday 27 January 2025, Dr. Daniele D’Alvia will discuss his last monograph titled “The Speculator of Financial Markets: how financial innovation and supervision made the modern world” (2023, Palgrave Macmillan, New York). Prof. Rosa M. Lastra will chair the event, and Mr. Andrea Enria will be the discussant.
Dr. Daniele D’Alvia is a Lecturer in Banking and Finance Law at CCLS – Queen Mary University of London, and an Associate Researcher at the European Banking Institute in Frankfurt. He is an internationally recognised expert on Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, Corporate Finance and Investment Banking Law. A pioneer in SPAC studies in law, authored of the first book on SPACs ever published by Routledge in 2021, and award-winner of the Colin B. Picker Prize by the American Society of Comparative Law. At CCLS – Queen Mary University of London, he teaches in the areas of Corporate Finance Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Investment Banking Law and Private Equity, and Derivatives and Risk Management.
Mr. Andrea Enria is an Italian economist who studied economics at Bocconi University and holds a M.Phil. degree in economics from the University of Cambridge. After his studies, Mr. Enria joined the Bank of Italy as an economist and he was eventually appointed as the Head of Regulation and Supervisory Policy. Mr. Enria served as Chair of the ECB Supervisory Board from 2019 to 2023, and previously he was the chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA) between 2011 and 2019. Since July 2024, Mr. Enria has joined the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority as a senior adviser.
The book illustrates financial markets from the point of view of their subjectivity, namely by analysing one of the most prominent figures among market operators: the speculator. Sometimes defined as smart individuals, opportunists and schemers, whose main job is to second-guess the opinions of other investors to take advantage of market information and its fluctuations. Whereas many textbooks or monographs are strictly devoted to the analysis of financial law or history, this book is telling a remarkable story based on markets’ boom-bust, expectations, banks’ fragilities, market sentiment, desires and dreams. The fall and rise of the entire humankind. Recalling Frank Knight’s core 1921 message, but this time around with application to financial (investment) instruments and financial innovations, D’Alvia offers a fascinating contemporary overview of risk, uncertainty and profit, as well as the difficult role the law plays, or sometimes does not play, in regulating them. The book reminds us that law too has its regulatory limits, and that we must never be complacent in our assumptions that we can simply regulate all market dangers away.