Necessary Reforms for Book–entry Securities

Uniformity of legislative response to proprietary issues relating to financial instruments is widely considered necessary, as a means of achieving a sound regulation of post-trading activities and, as a consequence, a broader, risk-free consolidation of financial markets. In its first part, the work aims to identify the different proprietary issues affecting financial instruments, and to analyze the consequences of lack of legislative uniformity upon the process of consolidation of financial markets.The work then provides a comprehensive survey of the EU and Hague Convention measures, both in force and planned, aiming to achieve legislative uniformity of the relevant proprietary issues. The analysis of the effectiveness of these measures demonstrates that satisfactory regulation cannot be achieved without taking a clear position on the problem of the legal nature of book-entry securities.