This working paper is the first published output of an eighteen month (December 2014 – June 2016) research project conducted by staff at the Melbourne Law School that examines enforcement and penalties regimes under legislation administered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). During 2015 and early 2016 the project will conduct a review...

The proposed reforms to financial regulation in South Africa, as embodied in the Financial Sector Regulation Bill, (second draft, 10 December, 2014) (‘FSR Bill’), represent the most important reforms to South Africa’s financial regulatory architecture since the 1987 de Kock Commission. The degree to which these reforms succeed will determine the extent to which South...

Recent years have seen a trend in many jurisdictions towards the adoption of short-form disclosure documents for retail financial products. This has been noted by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) in a recent consultation report on retail structured products, which stated as follows: Regulatory tool: Consistent with their respective legal frameworks, IOSCO members...