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Professor Rosa María Lastra

Rosa María

Sir John Lubbock Chair in Banking Law

Email: r.lastra@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8070
Room Number: Lincoln's Inn Fields

Profile

Qualifications: LLB & MA (Valladolid), LLM (Harvard, Fulbright Fellow), PhD (Madrid, with research stay at the LSE)

Professor Dr Rosa María Lastra is the Sir John Lubbock Chair in Banking Law and Chair of the Institute of Banking and Finance Law the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), Queen Mary University of London. She is a Vice-Chair of the Monetary Committee of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), founding member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC), research associate of the Financial Markets Group of the London School of Economics and Political Science, member of the European Banking Institute (EBI), member of the European Law Institute (ELI), member of the Sovereign Debt Scoping Forum of the FMLC (Financial Markets Law Committee), member of the International Insolvency Institute, member of the British Insurance Law Association, member of SUERF (the European Money and Finance Forum) and member of PRIME. She has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, United Nations (UNCTAD) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She is a member of two expert panels of the European Parliament: the Monetary Panel since 2015 and the Banking Union (Resolution) Panel since 2016. She is a member of Unidroit’s Working Group on Bank Insolvency since 2021. She has contributed as expert witness in international arbitration cases.

From November 2008 to June 2009 she acted as Specialist Adviser to the European Union Committee [Sub-Committee A] of the House of Lords regarding its Inquiry into EU Financial Regulation and responses to the financial crisis. In 2021, Professor Lastra acted as specialist adviser to the House of Lords in an inquiry on the Quantitative Easing (QE) programme of the Bank of England, conducted by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee (ECAM) chaired by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean [The QE inquiry terms of reference are available online]. In 2023, Professor Lastra she acted Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords to assist their Economics Affairs Committee, chaired by Lord Bridges of Headley, in its inquiry into The Bank of England: how is independence working? The report was published in November 2023 and can be found in the Parliament website.

Since 2022 Professor Lastra has been working in close collaboration with the IMF’s Legal Department in examining key legal issues on a topic—climate—at the forefront of the IMF’s agenda; the collaboration builds on a long-lasting intellectual partnership covering several legislative developments, initiatives, and policy proposals (including on legal issues related to Brexit, bank insolvency and resolution, public debt, central banking, digitalisation, and bank regulation).

Prior to coming to London, she was Assistant Professor of International Banking at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York (1993-1996). From January 1992 to September 1993 she was a consultant in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC From 2008 to 2010 she was a Visiting Professor of the University of Stockholm. Professor Lastra is Co-Director of the Sovereign Debt Forum, a collaboration between Georgetown and Queen Mary, and has acted as Principal Investigator in the Legal and Economic Conceptions of Money project funded by the ESRC under the Rebuilding Macroeconomics network (NIESR). She is Co-Director of the Queen Mary-UNIDROIT Institute of Transnational Commercial Law.

She studied at Valladolid University, Madrid University, London School of Economics and Political Science and Harvard Law School (Fulbright Fellow). Her publications include numerous articles in internationally refereed journals and several books: Research Handbook on Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance (Elgar, co-edited with Costanza Russo and William Blair, 2019), Research Handbook on Central Banking (Elgar, 2018, co-edited with Peter Conti-Brown), International Financial and Monetary Law (Oxford University Press, 2015, authored), Sovereign Debt Management (OUP, 2014, co-edited with Lee Buchheit), The Rule of Law in Monetary Affairs (Cambridge University Press, 2014, co-edited), International Law in Financial Regulation and Monetary Affairs, (OUP, 2012, co-edited with Thomas Cottier and John Jackson), Cross-Border Bank Insolvency (OUP, 2011, edited), Legal Foundation of International Monetary Stability (OUP, 2006, authored), The Reform of the International Financial Architecture (Kluwer, 2001, edited), Bank Failures and Bank Insolvency Law in Economies in Transition (Kluwer, 1999, co-edited) and Central Banking and Banking Regulation (LSE, 1996, authored).

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