Legal and Conduct Risk in the Financial Markets

This is the third edition of the only work to focus on the topic of legal risk, expanded in this edition to include much new material specifically on conduct risk. The book has been updated to take into account developments in the law and professional standards concerning such risks and associated values in the context of the financial markets.

Significant (and in some cases, endemic) conduct-related scandals, such as the widespread mis-selling of financial products and LIBOR manipulation, exposed (even precipitated) by the Financial Crisis, have resulted in legal and regulatory change in equal measure (and profound effect) to that of the prudential and financial stability concerns captured in the second edition.. Consequently this new edition fully examines the current approach to trust, ethics and conduct within the broader framework of reputational and legal risk. In doing so, it clarifies what constitutes legal risk in contemporary financial markets and how to manage it, drawing on examples and case studies.

Other developments in areas such as the resolution/insolvency of banks, the revision of the UK regulatory structure from the FSA to the FCA and PRA, and the recently made new crime of reckless management of a bank are all considered in full. There is also discussion of trends in areas ripe for development such as fiduciary duty amongst financial markets participants.

Combining practical emphasis with theoretical depth, this is an approachable and engaging reference guide to this important and evolving area of law.

Roger McCormick, Managing Director, CCP Research Foundation,Chris Stears, Research Director, CCP Research Foundation

Roger McCormick is a past Director of the Sustainable Finance Project at London School of Economics and Political Science, and a past Visiting Professor at LSE. He is now the Managing Director of CCP Research Foundation .He retired from full-time private legal practice in 2004, having practised law in the City of London for nearly thirty years.


Chris Stears is a solicitor, a fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, Research Director at CCP Research Foundation and principal at Medius Consulting.