This course introduces participants to the legal and economic issues raised by financial technology (FinTech).Problems in dealing with disruptive innovations will be highlighted and answers sought. For example, new payment service providers, such as PayPal, operate from one or two jurisdictions and offer their services around the world. This model creates immense challenges for supervisors and regulators. The questions they are confronting are the possibility of applying regulatory standards extraterritoriality, the exchange of information with other nation's authorities and the deference to foreign standards. Even more complex issues arise from the emergence of cryptocurrencies, robo-advisors and crowdfunding platforms. These questions will be examined, as well as the evolving response of global regulatory coordination and cooperation.
Thursday, 17 March
9:00 - 12:00 class
12:00 - 13:30 lunch break
13:30 - 17:30 class
Friday, 18 March
9:00 - 11:00 class
11:00 - 13:00 lunch break
13:00 - 18:00 class
Professor Matthias Lehmann is a full professor at the University of Vienna, where he holds the Chair for Private, Private International Civil and Comparative Law. He holds doctoral degrees from the University of Jena and Columbia University as well as a Habilitation (further thesis required to become a professor in Germany) on the dematerialisation of financial instruments from the University of Bayreuth. His main interest lies in international and comparative aspects of banking and financial law. Prof. Lehmann has published extensively on these subjects in German, English, French and Spanish. He has co-edited a 1800-page commentary on European Financial Services Law (Hart, Beck and Nomos 2019) and is regularly invited as a guest professor at the University Pablo de Olavide (Spain), the Université de Fribourg and the Université de Lausanne, and Sorbonne University (France).
Professor Lehmann is a member of the Academic Board of the European Banking Institute (EBI). He has participated in the European Commission’s Expert Group on Conflict of Laws Regarding Securities and Claims and in the UK Financial Market Law Committee’s working group on distributed ledger technology. He was one of the speakers at the ECB legal conference 2017 on the issue of standards for judicial review of ECB decisions. He has also acquired extensive experience as a legal expert in various cases involving financial and banking law.