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The various pre‐trial stages of these complex proceedings have been discussed in previous issues of this Journal in Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 70–72, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 274–280, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 359–364 and the factual background explained. Depositors in the UK branch of BCCISA (part of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International group which collapsed in 1991 leaving large scale losses) had brought actions for damages in respect of their uncompensated losses against the Bank of England (the Bank) in relation to its discharge of its statutory functions under the Banking Act 1979. They argued (1) that the Bank's licensing as a deposit‐taker and subsequent supervision of BCCI amounted to misfeasance in public office and/or (2) that they had, under European law, enforceable rights against the Bank conferred on them by the First Council Banking Co‐ordination Directive (77/780/EEC) which the Banking Act 1979 implemented in the UK. In May, 2000 the House of Lords definitively settled as a matter of law the second ground of the claimants' argument ruling that the European Directive in question did not have the effect of conferring rights in damages against the Bank on the depositors. In the same judgment the House of Lords ruled as a matter of law that the essential elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office (which by this stage is the only possible legal ground of claim available to the depositors) were to be found ‘where a public officer acts knowing that he has no power to do the act complained of and that the act will probably injure the [claimant]. It involves bad faith inasmuch as that the public officer did not have an honest belief that his act was lawful’ (per Lord Steyn, House of Lords judgment of 18th May, 2000 in these proceedings). This ‘reckless indifference’ which must be proven to exist for a claim against the Bank to succeed must be judged in a subjective sense, their Lordships ruled last year, so that the depositor claimants needed to show knowledge on the part of the Bank that the decision of the Bank would probably damage the Appellants. The question of whether or not the facts pleaded by the claimants reveal a sustainable cause of action against the Bank or whether, as the Bank had argued throughout, they did not and the action ought to be struck out without proceeding to full trial was referred to another House of Lords hearing. It was from that subsequent hearing on whether or not the claim should be allowed to proceed to full trial of the substantive issue of the Bank of England's alleged liability that this decision was made.

The factual background to this House of Lords decision lies in the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Banking Group. The Appellants (who were the Appellants in the House of Lords) were depositors who had lost monies in the collapse of BCCI. BCCI itself was named as a Plaintiff since it was an assignee of the claims of Plaintiff depositors. The Plaintiffs (who were the Appellants in this appeal and are hereafter referred to as such) made a very large number of allegations against the Bank of England (the Bank) with regard to its exercise of its powers and discretions under the statutory scheme of Banking Supervision contained in the Banking Acts of 1979 and 1987. These allegations related to (inter alia) the Bank's decision to grant a full licence to BCCI in 1980, its failure subsequently to revoke that licence and various other acts and omissions in its supervisory role up to BCCI's collapse in 1991.

Although the facts giving rise to this decision concerned planning control and planning law the decision is of relevance to the debate about the applicability of the Human Rights Act 1998 to the various regulatory functions and powers conferred on the Financial Services Authority (FSA) by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, hence its inclusion and discussion in this Journal. The three conjoined appeals which formed the subject matter of this decision were made directly to the House of Lords from a decision of the Divisional Court on 13th December, 2000 whereby the court made a declaration of incompatibility with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in respect of certain statutory decision‐making powers conferred on the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (the Secretary of State).

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

Improved creditor and community protection seemed attainable goals when Professor Daniel Prentice described s. 214 of the Insolvency Act (‘s. 214’) as ‘one of the most important developments in company law this century’. The profession and academics perceived that wrongful trading in its legislative form had a bright future because it promised to provide much needed protection. ‘Wrongful trading’ was introduced to minimise the abuse of limited liability by company officers. An honest director could not be liable for a company's debt despite reckless, unreasonable and cavalier business practices. Insolvency practitioners were having difficulty establishing dishonesty under the fraudulent trading provisions. The courts demanded a strict standard of proof for fraudulent trading and many cases never made it to court despite a prospect of recovery against directors. Wrongful trading by comparison is a recent development that, in theory, refines the standard of a director's duty and clarifies that conduct need not be fraudulent, illegal or unconscionable to attract legislative censure. Section 214 measures a director's conduct against a minimum standard of commercial morality and competence.

The benefits of accountants seeking prompt independent legal advice to protect both themselves and their clients during criminal investigations has been reinforced by the recent House of Lords case of R ? Crown Court at Southwark, ex parte Bowles.

Explores the issues which concerned auditing practitioners more than 100 years ago and reexamines them in the present day context. These issues include: the role and scope of the audit, audit independence, the auditor’s report, competition between auditors, litigation against auditors, and governance and regulation of the profession. Many of these concerns remain unresolved. Develops an historical perspective which helps to explain the endurance of these issues and informs policy makers in their endeavour to devise permanent solutions. Examines the determination of the profession′s early leaders to discuss the problem and publicly notes the contrast with the deafening silence emanating from their counterparts today.

This chapter examines the relationship between directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance and stock-price synchronicity by testing competing corporate governance-related monitoring and moral hazard-related agency conflict hypotheses. Testing a sample of stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for 2008–2020, the empirical results of this study indicate that D&O insurance in Taiwan is negatively correlated to stock-price synchronicity. This negative relation is robust to a battery of tests, including those of fixed-effects regression models, alternative sample periods, alternative synchronicity measures, and alternative insurance measures. Further evidence indicates that this negative relationship is more pronounced among firms with greater agency problems, especially during periods of high market uncertainty. Overall, these findings support the corporate governance-related monitoring hypothesis, which posits that firms with greater D&O insurance are likelier to be characterized by better governance structures and information transparency. Additionally, their stock prices are more likely to reflect firm-specific information in a timely and precise manner, and they are more likely to have lower synchronicity with the industry and market.

This paper aims to critically examine the applicability of disclosure‐based regulation in a pre‐emerging securities market.

The paper presents, by using archival data, an analysis of prerequisites for the usefulness of the disclosure philosophy making reference to some Asian securities markets with special reference to the contemporary experiences of the Bangladesh securities market.

The paper concludes that the disclosure philosophy itself is not a panacea, an effective disclosure regime requires a certain level of structural and infrastructural development of the market, and that a particular securities market should follow a paternalistic merit regulation until the attainment of that progress.

This paper contributes to the understanding of effectiveness of the disclosure philosophy for the regulation of securities markets from the perspective of investor protection.

This paper aims to analyse how the doctrine of occupiers' liability for the safety of child trespassers has been developed in English Law over the last 100 years by applying Pierre Bourdieu's theorising of the operation of the “juridical field”.

The paper presents a doctrinal analysis tracing the evolution of occupiers' liability across case law, legislation and policy in English Law and subjects these jurisprudential materials to a contextual socio‐legal analysis by examining both judicial discourse and the changing cultural and physical contexts within which the jurisprudence has developed.

The analysis outlines the tensions and subtleties of the doctrinal evolution of this area of the law and the ways in which both changes in social attitudes (e.g. to parental responsibility and children's play) and changes in the built environment have affected how the appellate judiciary have understood and applied occupiers' liability law to instances of harm suffered by child trespassers. The analysis finds Bourdieu's theorising of the juridical field to be an effective way of making sense of the senior judiciary's operation as an “interpretive community” in developing and practising this body of law.

This paper provides an empirical explication of key aspects of Bourdieu's abstract theorising and does so by analysing an area of the law that has attracted little academic investigation: whether conventional jurisprudential or socio‐legal. This paper attempts to show that it is possible (and for this analysis, necessary) to combine both approaches.