The NYU Journal of Law & Business hosted its fourth annual symposium, “Modernizing the Financial Regulatory Structure" on February 20. The day-long event featured panels moderated by Professors William Allen, Kevin Davis and Geoffrey Miller; the keynote was Steven L. Schwarz, Stanley A. Star Professor of Law and Business at Duke Law School.
The first panel, moderated by Allen, addressed systemic risk issues highlighted by the recent system and market collapses across the globe. Panelists included James Carlson, partner at Mayer Brown and Adjunct Professor of Law at the NYU School of Law; Michael Greenberger, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security; Ed Mierzwinski, the Consumer Program Director of the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups; and Henry Ristuccia, partner at Deloitte.
The second panel, moderated by Miller, focused on regulation in the financial services industry. It analyzed the regulatory responses leading up to and immediately following the collapses of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, as well as the popular cost of the regulatory response to the insolvency of the world’s largest financial institutions deemed too big to fail. “The war on regulation is over. The Fed has won,” said panelist Richard Kim, partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. “What we’re seeing now is that these benefits are coming at a great price. The price is still being determined and it appears to grow worse each day.” Other speakers included Thomas Baxter, general counsel and executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Jonathan Macey, deputy dean and Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance, and Securities Law at Yale Law School; and Henry Hu, Allan Shivers Chair in the Law of Banking and Finance at the University of Texas School of Law.
The final panel took on recent developments in the use of sovereign wealth funds as state investment vehicles. Moderated by Davis, the panel featured commentary by Joshua Ford Bonnie, partner at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett; Paul Downs, partner at Jones Day; Ronald Gilson, Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School; Edward Greene, partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; and Waajid Siddiqui, partner at Hogan & Hartson.