Securities Market Structure and Regulation: What Does the Future Hold?
Friday, November 10, 2006
Keynote Speaker:
Annette L. Nazareth
Commissioner, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law in partnership with The Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society
The securities markets are in the midst of unparalleled structural changes: electronic trading of securities is largely replacing the traditional floor-based trading system; the exchanges have been transformed from membership associations into publicly owned business corporations; and international mergers of stock exchanges are underway.
In three panel sessions, this symposium focused on these events and how they are likely to affect the protection of investors and the system of regulation and self-regulation that is designed to achieve that protection.
Panel I, “The Future Shape of the Markets,” covered the major issues inherent in decisions about market structure: how to balance the demands for competition and consolidation against the dangers of fragmentation; whether the trading markets will be electronic or manual, and to what extent; how retail and institutional interests can be reconciled; how to define and enforce best execution as a legal standard; and similar matters.
Panel II, “The Impact of Market Structure on Regulation and the Self-Regulatory System,” discussed the likely impact of changes in market structure on the fairness of the markets, international regulation, and the self-regulatory system.
Panel III, “The Respective Roles of Government and Competition in Shaping and Developing the Markets,” discussed the extent to which competition rather than government regulation should shape the markets and the appropriate role of the government in determining and regulating market structure.