Category: Article

The post-crisis EU regulation targeting hedge funds

Tiago Ventura Mendes,
LL.M. in European Banking and Financial Law, University of Luxembourg
LL.M. Candidate in International Financial Law, King’s College London

  1. The politically driven rationales to regulate hedge funds.

It is generally agreed that modern hedge funds have made their appearance around 60 years ago when Alfred Winslow Jones, a financially educated journalist, decided to invest in stock amalgamating long and short positions.[1] A hedge fund can be considered as being “any pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administered by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public”.[2] The term “hedge” leads one to believe that one important characteristic of those funds is the usage of certain financial instruments for hedging purposes[3] in addition to engaging in other trading strategies seeking to protect themselves from adverse market movements[4]. They invest very actively in liquid public markets while using short-term investment strategies and sophisticated investment techniques as derivatives trading and short-selling but also enter in heavy leveraged transactions.[5]  Hedge funds have been seen as playing fundamental roles in the market as contributing to market efficiency, promoting well-functioning corporate governance, unveiling fraudulent scandals and agitating boardrooms as active investors[6]. Continue reading “The post-crisis EU regulation targeting hedge funds”

The Snowden Aftermath; CJEU declares surveillance laws invalid for fundamental rights violation – the effects of the decision on Member States

Raven Butcher
LLM student at King’s College London specialising in International Business Law

EU law affects, or has the power to affect, Member States’ (MS) national laws. Where the Directives are clear, coherent and accepted by MS, the legal order can be viewed in systematic terms. Where they are less so, however, they become more contingent and fragile. The conveyance of these laws across states is not homogeneous and varies in light of identifiable factors. For example, transnational legal processes, processes through which transnational norms are conveyed, challenge national legal contexts and often conflict with domestic laws. States may block, adopt, translate or appropriate transnational law, and spur its reassessment. A prime example of this are the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) which are handed down to EU Member States, directly influencing their national legislation and in turn, moulding the relationship between them and their citizens. This article evaluates the extent to which EU law affects national legal systems by analysing the specific example of the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) and its impact on Member States with particular focus on the UK.

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Would the UK be forced to exit the EU if it exits the ECHR?

Mr Émile T. McHarsky-Todoroff LL.B (Surrey) LL.M Candidate (LSE), Associate Tutor in EU Law (University of Surrey) and Legal Consultant (Spectrum Legal Consulting).

There has been a considerable degree of noise around both the concept of “Brexit” (a potential UK exit from the EU) and the possibility of the UK withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) in some fashion. Leaving political arguments to one side, this blog post is interested in whether these two hypotheticals may interconnect; specifically, whether a UK exit from the ECHR would entail that the UK has to also leave the EU. This immediately begs the question of what one means by “has to”. If this is taken to mean a legal requirement that the UK leaves the EU should it choose to withdraw from the ECHR, then the answer is a flat “no”.  While the Lisbon Treaty introduced the machinery for a Member State to leave the Union (now Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU)),[1] there is no “foot to backside” rule in the EU; in other words there is no Treaty provision which specifically allows for a Member State to be ejected from the EU.[2] Therefore, this post will aim to explore the different legal tools which could be used to push the UK out of the EU door. Continue reading “Would the UK be forced to exit the EU if it exits the ECHR?”

Impediments Under European Law To The Prevention And Prosecution Of Foreign Fighter Crimes

Fahrid Chishty
Second year undergraduate student and Dickson Poon Scholar of the LLB in Politics, Philosophy & Law (PPL) at King’s College, London

The European legal order is beset by an unprecedented challenge today. Domestic nationals, prevailingly of Western European origin, are engaged at the centre of ideological conflicts in Iraq and Syria in increasing numbers. Against the backdrop of sectarian conflict and the proliferation of terrorist networks, European ‘foreign fighters’ pose a significant threat, upon return, to the security and prosperity of their Member States (MS) of origin. National governments have enacted legislation in recent months in order to stem the tide of European fighters leaving and re-entering Union or State territory, accentuating the need for a collaborative and synergetic regional strategy. This article assesses the impediments, actual and potential, to the prevention and prosecution of foreign fighter criminality in the Middle East region (ME) under European Union law. It identifies potential lacunae in the law, concluding with the case for EU-wide legislation facilitating the arraignment of foreign fighters consistently across MS, as proposed by Gilles De Kerchove, Brussels’ Counter-Terrorism Coordinator (CTC), at the Commission in December 2014.[1]

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Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union

Amanda Spalding, PhD Candidate, King’s College London, The Dickson Poon School of Law – Teaching Fellow, SOAS, School of Law

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has finally given its opinion as to the validity of the draft agreement on the accession of the European Union to the European Convention of Human Rights. Unfortunately, it found that the draft agreement is not compatible with EU law. This is a significant set-back to an already complex and drawn-out process of accession.

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