Banking Law Committee

Forthcoming conferences and webinars View All Conferences

Is the ‘too big to fail’ trauma still haunting us? Making sense of bank resolution after SVB and Credit Suisse

26 Sep 2023 1300 - 1400 BST

Webinar

IBA Annual Conference Paris 2023

29 Oct - 03 Nov 2023

Paris , France

39th IBA International Financial Law Conference

15 May - 17 May 2024

Dublin , Ireland

IBA Annual Conference Mexico City 2024

15 Sep - 20 Sep 2024

Mexico City , Mexico

Projects and reports

Fintech: how is the world shaping the financial innovation industry?

In recent years, financial technology (Fintech) has expanded worldwide, forcing traditional institutions to adapt to this innovative means of doing financial business. Around the globe, the legal response to these new trends has been diverse, although we can trace certain similarities.

In this context, the IBA Banking Law Committee has conducted an investigation project to observe the regulatory and legal responses to Fintech and their impact, and the report is available below. For this purpose, we worked with different law firms from five regions. The report contains analysis of how various countries regulate Fintech companies and looks at the existence of specific legal frameworks applicable to crypto assets. Also, it assesses how different jurisdictions around the globe regulate payment service providers and digital wallets and contains an overview of special programmes supporting Fintech ecosystems (eg, regulatory sandboxes), which some countries have recently adopted. Lastly, the report covers how jurisdictions regulate and deal with matters relating to open banking.

The reports covers 39 countries and is divided into five regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America.

The report has been coordinated by Carlos M Melhem, a partner at Allende & Brea in Argentina; Matias Langevin, a partner at HD Legal in Chile; Lukasz Szgeda, a partner at Wardynski & Partners in Poland; and Rafael Aguilera, a partner at Gómez-Acebo & Pombo in Spain.

Download the report

Covid-19 emergency measures relating to funding and claims recovery

In 2020 the Covid-19 crisis struck economies worldwide and triggered an unprecedented set of emergency measures to financially support private companies and consumers, mitigate the impact of the outbreak on financial contracts and payment obligations and avoid systemic insolvencies. In this context, the IBA Banking Law Committee undertook a comprehensive survey of those measures across a selection of jurisdictions from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, jointly representing a material part of the global economy.

The review provides a comparative description of measures under a standard grid of questions around four themes: (1) emergency funding through state guaranteed loans and sectorial support; (2) relaxation of regulatory requirements for lenders; (3) stay/rescheduling of statutory time periods and of contractual obligations, and temporary changes to insolvency and (4) work out frameworks.

The survey is meant to assist practitioners in understanding risk patterns, trends, challenges and opportunities and preparing for adjustments in their fields of practice from a domestic and international perspective. Going further, it is expected to be a reference base to explore new paradigms in banking and finance that may emerge out of the Covid-19 crisis, and their impact on banking and financial services, markets, and players.

The report has been coordinated by Jean-François Adelle, a partner at Jeantet AARPI Paris and Klaus Löber, Head of Oversight at the European Central Bank. IBA Banking Law Committee officers and members in 30 jurisdictions have contributed to the report.

Impact investing: the rise of impact – a lawyer's perspective from a business outlook

A taskforce on the rise of impact and the role of lawyers (the 'Task Force') was created in 2020. The objective of the Taskforce is to produce a set of practical guidelines and recommendations related to impact investing (the 'Guidelines and Recommendations'). These are being developed by business lawyers, addressed to clients who intend to attract investors such as BlackRock to their companies by:

1. understanding not only technical legal issues but also the overall context, the changing paradigms and the need for flexibility, sustainability and stakeholder inclusion, where companies are accountable not only for generating profits but also for creating positive social and environmental impacts;
2. infusing ethics into the decision-making process, weighing legal risks and protecting the company’s interests; and
3. becoming strategic facilitators of an organisation’s growth.

As part of this work, the Task Force has outlined a very practical case, where a client holding of several leading companies in various industries, with operations in many countries and shares listed in the most important exchanges, has entered into an agreement with an investor that intends to make its investment in tranches, provided the company undertakes to deal effectively with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects of its businesses, with milestones to be met in the short and long term.

The Guidelines and Recommendations focus on the fundraising and corporate governance aspects of the practical case mentioned above.

In December 2020, the Final Consolidated Recommendations from the Smart Governance Working Group were presented to the IBA. The conclusions of the work were discussed at the IBA 2020 Virtually Together Conference during the IBA Showcase session: The rise of impact – a lawyer's perspective from a business outlook, which took place on Tuesday 17 November 2020.

Subcommittees and other groups

The Banking Law Committee also coordinates the activities of the following subcommittees/working groups.

• Alternative Finance Subcommittee
• Banking Law Committee Advisory Board
• Banking Regulation Subcommittee
• Clearing and Settlement of Financial Securities Subcommittee
• Derivatives Subcommittee
• Finance in Emerging Countries Subcommittee
• Financial and Banking Law Conferences Subcommittee
• Financial Innovations Subcommittee
• Innovations in Financing Transactions Subcommittee
• International Financial Law Reform Subcommittee
• Islamic Finance Subcommittee
• Legal Opinions Subcommittee
• Project Finance Subcommittee
• Structured Finance Subcommittee