What We Cover

Jurisdiction-Specific Regulation

  • United States: Rulemaking and guidance from the SEC, CFTC, Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC and other agencies, for example the SEC's proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets" or its proposal to rescind the investment adviser pay-to-play rule. We also follow Congressional activity on market structure and related legislation.

  • United Kingdom: Developments from the FCA, PRA, Bank of England, HM Treasury, OFSI and Parliament, including the FCA's overhaul of the AIFM regime, the new cryptoasset regime, changes to the AIM Rules and the Bank of England's payments and RTGS work.

  • European Union: Legislative and supervisory developments from the European Commission, the ESAs (EBA, EIOPA, ESMA), the ECB and national authorities such as Germany’s BaFin, covering areas such as CRD/CRR, EMIR, MiFID, AIFMD and the AI Act as applied to financial services.

  • Other Regions: Where they have impact on global markets, major developments in other financial centres, such as Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia.

Global Standard-Setters and Cross-Border Coordination

  • Output from the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee, CPMI, IOSCO, the BIS and the IMF, such as the CPMI-IOSCO cyber resilience toolkit and its work on FMIs' reliance on third-party providers.

  • How global standards are implemented, delayed or diverge across jurisdictions, and what that means for multinational firms.

Prudential Regulation and Capital

  • Capital, liquidity and governance requirements for banks, investment firms and insurers, including Basel implementation and the classification and thresholds that determine which regime a firm falls under.

Capital Markets and Market Structure

  • Listing regimes, equity and debt capital raising, trading venue rules, market abuse and transparency. This includes changes that affect issuer fundraising and investor liquidity, such as the AIM reforms.

  • Market infrastructure: CCPs, CSDs, trading venues and settlement, plus clearing and custody rules.

Asset Management and Funds

  • Rules for fund managers, hedge funds, private equity, real asset and retail funds, and investment advisers, including authorisation, reporting, remuneration and conduct requirements.

  • Competitiveness and domicile questions, such as UK versus EU fund regimes.

Derivatives, Clearing and Margin

  • EMIR, Dodd-Frank-derived rules and international margin standards, including initial margin thresholds for uncleared derivatives and the knock-on effects for buy-side firms and dealers.

Digital Assets, Stablecoins and Tokenisation

  • Securities-law treatment of crypto assets, authorisation gateways, stablecoin regimes, custody and trading platform rules, and the regulatory perimeter questions that decide which regulator and which regime applies.

  • Central bank and Treasury approaches to digital money, tokenisation and distributed ledger technology.

Payments and Financial Market Infrastructure

  • Payment system regulation, RTGS and CHAPS developments, ISO 20022 migration and Swift standards, plus operational resilience requirements.

Financial Crime, Sanctions and Enforcement

  • Sanctions regimes and enforcement actions (for example OFSI and OFAC penalties), AML/CFT rules, and the control failures that regulators call out, read as practical lessons for compliance teams.

  • Significant enforcement trends across the SEC, FCA, ESMA and national authorities.

Technology, AI and Operational Resilience

  • How regulators supervise AI used in financial services, including EU AI Act implementation by national authorities such as BaFin.

  • Cyber resilience, outsourcing and third-party concentration risk, and cloud dependencies.

Consumer, Conduct and Governance Issues

  • Conduct rules, disclosure and investor protection, remuneration, political contributions and conflicts-of-interest rules, and changes to governance requirements.

How We Write

Our regular issue is organised by region: Global, United States, United Kingdom, European Union. Each item typically includes:

  1. The development: what was published, by whom and when, with links to the primary source.

  2. Key details: the specific thresholds, dates, scope and exemptions that matter.

  3. Market implications: who is affected, where the risks and opportunities lie, and what firms should consider now, including the difference between a binding rule and a directional signal.

We aim to separate what has been proposed from what is final, and to flag where timelines are long (for example multi-year implementation) so readers can plan appropriately.

Please Note

Global Financial Regulation is for general information and analysis. It does not constitute legal, financial or investment advice.