European regulatory private law going global? : the case of product governance

Abstract

The article claims that contract law principles are being used by transnational financial regulation to set a world-wide (proto)normative framework regulating intra-firm processes. This practice comes close to the European Regulatory Private Law (ERPL) phenomenon already employed by the EU lawmaker in quite technical fields, such as banking and financial services law. After an overview explaining what it is meant by ERPL, the article discusses the new Product Governance rules under the Market in Financial Instrument Directive II, which may be viewed as the most recent example of ERPL. The article then provides a description of the normative production of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), also regarding product governance rules. The result of the author's analysis seems to suggest that IOSCO has paved the way for a European approach to product governance which, overall, is coherent with the ERPL theory.