This webinar is convened by the European Political Economy Project

Book discussion

The UK and Multi-Level Financial Regulation: From Post-Crisis Reform to Brexit 

This book examines the role of the United Kingdom in shaping post-crisis financial regulatory reform, and assesses the implications of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. It develops a domestic political economy approach to examine how the interaction of three domestic groups - elected officials, financial regulators, and the financial industry - shaped UK preferences, strategy, and influence in international and EU-level regulatory negotiations. The framework is applied to five case studies: bank capital and liquidity requirements; bank recovery and resolution rules; bank structural reforms; hedge fund regulation; and the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. It concludes by reflecting on the future of UK financial regulation after Brexit.

The book argues that UK regulators pursued more stringent regulation when they had strong political support to resist financial industry lobbying. UK regulators promoted international harmonisation of rules when this protected the competitiveness of industry or enabled cross-border externalities to be managed more effectively; but were often more resistant to new EU rules when these threatened UK interests. Consequently, the UK was more successful at shaping international standards by leveraging its market power, regulatory capacity, and alliance building (with the US). But it often met with greater political resistance at the EU level, forcing it to use legal challenges to block reform or secure exemptions. The book concludes that political and regulatory pressure was pivotal in defining the UK's 'hard' Brexit position, and so the future UK-EU relationship in finance will most likely be based on a framework of regulatory equivalence.

This event is taking place online using Zoom. Please register here.

Scott James joined King's College London in September 2008, and served as Deputy Head of the Department of Political Economy from 2015-16. From 2012 to 2016, he was Principal Investigator on the ESRC-funded 'Voices in the City' project, and since 2016 has been part of the UK research team for the nine-country Horizon 2020 'EMU Choices' project. In 2017 Dr James held a visiting position at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Dr James has published 14 articles in leading international journals, a monograph with Manchester University Press, and several book chapters with Palgrave Macmillan.

Lucia Quaglia is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna (IT). She was professor of Political Science at the University of York (2012-2017) (UK). She was awarded research fellowships by the Hanse-Wissenschafts Kolleg (DE), the University of Bremen (DE), the Fonds National de la Recherche (Luxembourg), the Max Planck Institute in Cologne (DE), the Scuola Normale Superiore (IT), and the European University Institute (IT). She has published 7 books, 4 of which with Oxford University Press. She has guest co-edited 4 special issues of highly ranked academic journals.

Alex Lehmann is a non-resident fellow of Bruegel, the Brussels think tank, and a consultant with Berlin Economics, a policy consultancy focused on Eastern Europe. Until 2016 he was the lead economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Previously, Alex Lehmann was on the staff of the IMF, served as an advisor to the World Trade Organisation and the Central Bank of Mexico, and worked in research and teaching positions at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the London School of Economics. He holds a graduate degree in economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in economics from University of Oxford. 

Sam Lowe is a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. He is also a visiting research fellow at The Policy Institute, Kings College London and a co-founder of the UK Trade Forum. He works on trade issues, with a focus on Brexit, customs and regulatory barriers, and trade in services. He regularly briefs businesses, government officials, politicians and European institutions, including Parliamentary select committees and the European Central Bank and was previously a member of the British government's Strategic Trade Advisory Group (2019-2020). Sam often appears in the media, including the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, The Financial Times, The Times, Politico, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and Sky News.

Daniel Hardy (Academic Visitor, St Antony's College, Oxford) will chair.

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