Competition in Fintech Markets

The Swedish Network for European Legal Studies (SNELS) and the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Stockholm are proud to invite you to the first conference on fintech competition.

Since the first commercial transaction with a cryptocurrency in 2010, the fintech industry has grown to the point that it now forms part of the mainstream economy and encompasses even the activity of central banks. As that segment of the market grew, so did competition concerns. The normal mode of operation of financial institutions, which involves daily collaboration and exchange of information, has traditionally posed a challenge for the theory of anticompetitive agreements, and the technological facilitation that fintech brought along complicated the picture further. At the same time as institutions grew larger, abuse of dominance considerations also started emerging. The EU’s probe into Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra, and the investigation into Dutch and Polish banks for jointly refusing access to fintech, are examples of early but representative activity. The involvement ofcentral banks and the possibility of government-back financial products also raise the question of competition between CBDCs, fiatmoney, stablecoins, and other cryptoassets.

While competition law theory and practice in the EU is well established, the new features of fintech and financial innovation mean that certain adaptations are needed. This conference moves away from common and repetitive discussions generally around digital markets, a domain which is now saturated, and instead breaks ground to set the intellectual agenda on the specific issues arising in what we see as a game-changing market enabled by innovations and technologies in the financial sector.

Co-hosts:

Konstantinos Stylianou (University of Leeds), Marios Iacovides (University of Oxford) and Björn Lundqvist (Stockholm University).

The conference is organised in cooperation with University of Leeds and ASCOLA.

Key-note speakers:

Rikard Jermsten, Head of Swedish Competition Authority (Konkurrensverket)
Martin Flodén, Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Sweden (Riksbank)

Programme

View the full programme – please note that event timings in the programme are listed in CEST rather than BST.

Practical information

The conference is free to attend. Due to local restrictions the conference will be held online on Zoom. Login details will be provided to attendees.

For any further questions please email network coordinator Helena Eriksson at helena.eriksson@juridicum.su.se

Register for the event.