Securities Enforcement Across Abrahamic Legal Systems

Abstract

Enforcement of securities laws is increasingly an international—indeed, a global—affair. On the one hand, this globalization broadens funding streams and facilitates capital formation across borders, allowing new ideas to flourish amidst growing financial liquidity. On the other, globalization engenders a host of problems at the national and international level, from a single nation's tracking the ultimate beneficial owner of securities in order to avoid benefiting their competitors or enemies (whether state or non-state actors) to investing in commodities or concerns forbidden in one country or another. The rise of cryptocurrencies has exacerbated some of these problems. In this chapter, I will discuss international collaboration across countries whose financial regimes are explicitly guided by one or another Abrahamic legal tradition to show how mutual recognition across Abrahamic lines can lead to more effective securities law enforcement—and hence enhanced capital formation—within any individual country.