New Paradigms for Sustainable Financial Regulation : An International Perspective

In most developed countries financial scandals, crimes and other misconducts are not tolerated and/or severely punished offenses. These wrongdoings are multi-rooted with devastating consequences. Some may affect a number of clients undermining the confidence of the markets as in the cases of Norbourg and Société Générale, while in other cases the pernicious effects are deeper, lasting and, above all, systemic, like the LIBOR scandal and the manipulation of foreign exchange and commodity benchmarks (Thompson, 2016). In the cases of widely shared misdeeds, the identification of a single culprit becomes extremely difficult.1 By and large, in these scandals, a great number of individuals is involved and this happens in various layers of the businesses. Due to the complexity of their intricacies, the amplitude of the offense takes time to get uncloaked. Because of their perverseness and extensiveness, the risks of contagion are great. Eventually, the latter becomes systemic, jeopardizing the entire national economy and in some cases the international financial system, as it was the case with the recent global financial crisis (GFC).