Professor Emilios Avgouleas
Professor Emilios Avgouleas holds the (statutory) International Banking Law and Finance Chair at the University of Edinburgh and is the founding director of the Edinburgh LLM in International Banking Law and Finance. He currently serves as a member of the European Securities and Markets Group, the Stakeholder Group of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Emilios is a senior research fellow at Edinburgh University's blockchain lab and currently serves as a regular visiting Professor at the School of European Political Economy, Luiss Guido Carli. He is a fellow member of the academic board of the European Banking Institute (EBI) and research member/fellow of the renown European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a member (invited observer until membership confirmation) of the Monetary Comittee of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), the leading committee of central bank chief counsel and world experts in International monetary and financial law. He is currently engaged by the World Economic Forum (WEF)/Davos to conduct research on Systemic Risk, Innovation, and Technology in the context of the Great Reset. He is also acting as a consultant for the European Parliament for the general area of EU financial stability, Bank Resolution, and post-Covid 19 NPLs.
Emilios is a leading international expert on financial reform, fintech policy and regulation, banking theory and regulation, capital markets regulation, law and finance, and global economic governance. He is currently involved in major research projects on Blockchain Technology, Money and Finance; Decentralised Finance and Capital Markets; and Sustainable Finance and world Economic Governance. He was previously a member of the Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority (EBA) (2015-2020), elected in the so-called 'top-ranking' academics section.
Emilios served in the Eurogroup Select Panel for the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) for 2 periods (2016-2020). He was a distinguished vis. Research Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong (HKU) between 2017 and 2020. He has served, at different times, as a distinguished visiting professor, visiting professor, visiting professorial fellow and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Tsinghua University, National University of Singapore, and the Hong Kong University-Duke Law Summer School. He is also Emilios a member of the sovereign debt group of the Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC) operating under the auspices of the Bank of England and a fellow member of the Royal Economic Society (RES).
Emilios has published extensively in the wider field of law and finance, bank regulation and financial stability, International political economy, fintech architecture regulation and governance, behavioral finance and capital markets. He is the author of a large number of peer- review journal articles published by leading Journals around the world including the Journal of Financial Stability, JCLS, Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance, Law and Contemporary Problems, EBOR, ECFLR, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, Columbia Journal of European Law, etc. He is also the author of acclaimed research monographs: Governance of Global Financial Markets: The Law, the Economics, the Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Mechanics and Regulation of Market Abuse: A Legal and Economic Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2005). He co-authored the Principles of Banking Law (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 2018). He has also co- edited a number of books: Reconceptualizing Global Finance and its Regulation(Cambridge University Press, 2016), Capital Markets Union in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Political Economy of Financial Regulation (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector – Ten Years after the Great Crash (McGill University Press, 2019). He was the Guest co-editor of the Special Issue of the EBOLR (2019(20)) on Law, Finance and Technology and he is the Guest editor of the forthcoming Special Issue of the ECFLR (3/2021) on Digital Finance and EU Capital Markets.
Emilios was educated at the University of Athens (LLB) and the London School of Economics (LSE) from where he obtained his LLM and PhD in law and finance (1999). Before joining Edinburgh in 2012 Emilios was the Professor of International Financial Markets and Financial Law at the University of Manchester.
Emilios teaches strongly inter-disciplinary courses on banking law and finance, financial regulation, capital markets law, and the law and economics of corporate finance both at the PG and the UG level and supervises a number of gifted PhD students. He has at various periods acted as Director of the Edinburgh Commercial LawCentre and head of subject area.
An impactful scholar, Emilios' work is frequently cited and commented upon in major Parliamentary and public policy reports, including the UK Parliament's Enquiry on Banking Standards (which also adopted Emilios' conceptual definition of market abuse), EU Commission's Report on Short Selling, Australian Parliamentary Enquiry on Pensions, US Congress Inquiries, the House of Lords - EU Committee, the Irish Commission on Banking, as well as major think-tank and finance industry reports and submissions in major consultations on such diverse issues as banks and corporate disclosure regimes, long-term & sustainable equity markets, bank structural reform, and bank bail-ins. He is also often cited by the global media including the Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
Until 2008 Emilios practised in the broader field of International and European financial law and structured finance. He worked as an Associate at the Derivatives and Financial Institutions Group of Clifford Chance LLP, as a Managing Associate at the Financial Markets Group of Linklaters.
With a cosmopolitan background and focus Emilios has given keynote lectures, annual lectures, research seminars and conference papers in a plethora of academic institutions (Yale, Tsinghua, Oxford, Cambridge, HKU) and think-tanks (Carnegie, Chatham House, Bruegel, CIGI) and is often invited to speak to influential public policy organisations such as the Bank of England, the Basel Committee, the European Parliament, US Federal Reserve banks, and Singapore Monetary Authority.
He has also organised or co-organised both in Edinburgh and around the globe a series of very successful conferences High Level workshops and roundtables on systemic risk, bank resolution, and Financial technology with the latest examples being the Edinburgh High Level Financial Stability Roundtable on 26 March 2018. Read article.
The CIGI high level workshop on systemic risk on 24 May 2018, and the UCL/Durham/Edinburgh financial technology conference selected by HM's Treasury to be part of the UK's Fintech week 2018 on 22 March 2018.
Research Interests
I have an active interest in public policy and financial reform. I currently conduct research on Long-term finance, public policy and sustainable markets, financial (blockchain) technology and market transformation, and systemic risk. I tend to focus on foundational and transformational research projects. Some of my current research explains the short-comings of the neo-liberal view of financial markets, which today have become loci and engines for the perpetuation of unfettered speculation. It also doubts the utility of complex and suffocating politically-driven regulation as well as the anticapitalist view of markets as re-distributive meachanisms. This is a position that can easily lead a researcher into "splendid isolation". I have already presented parts of this research in presitigious US institutions inc. the Wasserman Law & Finance workshop @ Yale Law School, the JFK School, and Levy institute, and Cambridge. I have been greatly encouraged by the very active engagement of and interaction with students during those talks. This has extended beyond the events themselves and I'm very grateful for theirs (and colleagues') extensive and passionate feedback notes and humbled by their insights.
Concurrently I conduct research on financial stability, bank bail-ins, and optimal ways to tackle bank NPLs both within the eurozone and the wider framework including Asian banking markets.
Earlier research on bank leverage, bank bail-ins, and financial stability has led to a number of recent scholarly outputs of which some have received extensive media attention. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9a41d96-c3e1-11e3-a8e0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz324aKH15v; die Welt
I also supervise a number of very talented students who conduct promising research in the above or related areas. Last one, a Scottish lawyer and mum, impressed her examiners & passed with no corrections, some achievement for a law thesis that had a significant empirical component.
I'm always willing to supervise for a PhD outstanding and innovative students who are willng to work very hard. Believers in the value of holidays before you reach PhD submission (or your 40th birthday) need not apply.
Indicative Grants: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (2008-2009): Governance of global financial markets; award grade A+
Australian Research Council (2013-2016): for joint research with Professors Buckley(PI) and Arner on the study of systemic risk transmission channels.
Asian Development Bank/HKU (2013) (jointly with HKU academics) for research on the lessons the European Banking Union holds for East Asian Economic Integration.
Visiting and Research Positions
Emilios has given annual & keynote lectures, lectures, and seminars and has chaired workshops in a number of leading UK and International Universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, LSE, Duke, Hong Kong University, University of Copenhagen, UCL, etc. and has held a number of visiting posts. Longer term visiting posts have been: Yale Law School, Senior Visiting Scholar (Spring 2016), Visting Professor, National University of Singapore (August/September 2016), Harvard University Law School (Winter, 2016), Visiting Professorial Fellow, Global Capital Markets Center Prof. Fellow at Duke University's Law School and Fuqua School of Business (AY 2008-9); Professor of Capital Markets Law at the China-Europe School of Law, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing (2009); Dennis J. Block Center Fellow, Brooklyn Law School (New York, 2007).
Websites
