Intermediation and Beyond

This project, run by Professor Louise Gullifer and Professor Jennifer Payne, and co-run by Guy Morton, will consider specific problems in the law of intermediated securities and investigate potential solutions.

The global shift from securities being held directly by an investor to many securities being held via an intermediary raises important legal issues, including the impact on the rights of investors and the enforcement of those rights against intermediaries and issuers.  The cross-border nature of such issues adds another layer of complexity and reduces legal certainty.  Against this, intermediation offers benefits for many investors including a reduction in costs and the facilitation of the use of securities in the collateral, repo and securities lending markets.

The project will cover a number of topics relating to intermediated securities including the history of intermediation, the benefits and problems in the current system of intermediated securities and how future legal and technological developments could help to resolve these problems while retaining the benefits of intermediation.

The primary output of the project is a book 'Intermediation and Beyond' which is likely to be published at the end of 2018.

This project is undertaken by the Commercial Law Centre.  For enquiries about the project, please contact isp@hmc.ox.ac.uk.

An account of the first workshop, which addressed the enforcement of debt securities, is available here.

Accounts of the subsequent workshops are available below:

Second workshop; third workshop; fourth workshop; fifth workshop.