The future of international financial business: Global regulatory framework

Abstract

Like other cross-border businesses, international financial business heavily depends on the predictability and stability of its business environments. The current crisis has focused on the national and world political processes around the issues of new international financial architecture and regulation. Despite numerous intergovernmental organizations’ plans, many national support packages have been implemented. Similarly, norms to regulate international finance have been developed but only within the realm of national hard law. Bearing in mind the reality of the Westphalian system, the soft-law approach is probably the only feasible possibility to commence the process of redesigning international financial regulation. Even though the concept of international agreements, based on soft law, might be a framework to deliver certain results in the future, the present level of discrepancy among national political agendas is still too significant for the general goals of international financial regulation to be agreed upon. Key words: International finance, crisis, regulation, soft law.