Competition Law and Financial Services

David Harrison is Senior Counsel specialising in EU/competition law at Bond Dickinson LLP. He has a background in economic and financial public policy issues, and has been speechwriter for the Foreign Secretary and the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is author of The Organisation of Europe (Routledge, 1995).

David Harrison shows how and why regulation of the financial markets has failed in the past - and explains how this policy failure can be corrected, by applying proper competition policy principles to the sector in the future. Like his previous book, The Organisation of Europe, the analysis is innovative, elegant and thought-provoking. Anthony Teasdale (author, The Penguin Companion to European Union)Harrison’s latest work is one of outstanding vision, clarity and concision. Drawing on Keynesian economics, and questioning the received wisdom that finance is self-correcting and efficient, Harrison explains how markets for financial services differ from markets for goods, what the defects specific to their operation are, and how these can be remedied by the application of competition law. In the process, Harrison outlines a plausible complement (or, perhaps, alternative) to dedicated financial markets regulation. Recommended, for experts and lay readers alike. Phoebus Athanassiou (Senior Legal Counsel, European Central Bank, Frankfurt)To borrow from Keynes, David Harrison has found a new way of looking at the banking sector’s ‘magneto trouble’. He applies relentless legal logic to a problem which caused the recent financial crisis and has yet to be resolved. As regulators amend their rule books and devise new bank resolution mechanisms, they will be well advised to pay attention to this important book’s recommendations. Thus may they pre-empt further turmoil, protect deposits and serve the public interest.Philip Ward

• 1. Introduction 2. The Single Market Background 3. Theory 4. Practice 5. Capital Markets 6. Banks (I): Structural Issues 7. Banks (II): Behavioural Issues 8. Analysis 9. Remedies