2019. Securities and Financial Services Regulation

Abstract

The over-financialisation of the world has come under serious attack since the Global Financial Crisis, perhaps justifiably so. We are increasingly reminded of Churchill’s desire to make “finance less proud and industry more content”. Many of us in academia have attempted to do so in the only way we can, arguing for the importance of, amongst other things, SME funding. But technology has perhaps intervened to increase the challenges in this respect through its role in finance services, including P2P lending, cryptocurrency, tokenization and trading platforms etc. Banks and other traditional financial intermediaries like financial advisers have sometimes been side-lined. This may be of little loss to SMEs, however, given that banks have not been lending enough to them, preferring instead to lend to households and indirectly inflating property values. But even exchanges or platforms have been set up less to channel finance to SMEs but to facilitate even more financial activity, often trading in non-standard financial products rather than shares and bonds. Disputes in relation to these technology-related financial activities have increasingly been litigated in Singapore courts. This survey discusses these cases as well as those in other parts of the capital markets, including the regulation of bonds and share buybacks.