The FCA and Criminal Enforcement: Delivering “credible deterrence” and representing a departure from the “haphazard pursuit” of financial crime?

This seminar considers the envisioned role of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) from what can be gleaned about it, its culture, and its approach in the earliest days of its existence.

This is grounded strongly in evident scholarly interest currently being taken in linking the global financial crisis with revelations of financial crime. The seminar focuses on the enforcement of market abuse by the FCA and its predecessor within the broader sweep of what can be termed ‘financial crime’. In noting that the FSA was not, and never intended to be, a mainstream prosecutor of financial crime, a distinct focus on market abuse chimes in closely with current scholarly interest in the interactions between the financial crisis and financial crime, through how threats to systemic stability became a hallmark of the events of 2007-8.

From this, market abuse provides a lens for exploring the FSA’s adoption of the philosophy and ethos of ‘credible deterrence’, and FCA commitment to retain it, which assists ultimately in applying the hypothesis of the ‘haphazard pursuit of financial crime’ to pre-crisis criminal enforcement relating to financial crime undertaken by the FSA. In drawing on the earliest approaches of the FCA actually in enforcement, and in crafting underpinning enforcement policy, the paper considers how these core FCA activities might suggest that the financial crisis has marked something of a turning point for the enforcement of financial crime, and for signalling changes in approach.

1 CPD point – Law Society; Bar – application pending.

A drinks reception will follow the event at 6pm.

Location Details

Room G.33
The Liberty Building
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT

The Liberty Building is number 16 on the campus map. Located on the western campus.