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The risk of a systemic crisis and the inability of depositors to monitor how banks are governed are long-standing public policy concerns. Since joining Bangor University in 2008 Professor Klaus Schaeck and collaborators from central banks and international financial organisations have worked to inform the global policy debate on these issues. Specifically, how varying competitive conditions, corporate governance structures and regulatory innovations incentivise the development of safer and sounder banking systems. Notable impacts of Schaeck's research since 2008 include: the use by central banks of his new methodology to gauge banking sector competition; priority change in the policy debate over the structure of bank boards and, in particular, the influence of female executives; and finally heightened policy awareness of the unintended consequences of regulations imposed on troubled or bailed-out banks.
Since the 1980s, there has been a wave of global activity seeking improved control of money laundering and confiscation of crime proceeds. This set of research studies, based around the work of Professor Mike Levi, constitutes core empirical analysis of the scale of financial crimes, and what can be properly said about the impacts of social and formal control measures against them. The studies have informed and helped to shape the fraud, money laundering and organised crime strategies of the UK Home Office, UK enforcement agencies, and international bodies such as the EC Justice and Home Affairs and IMF post-2008.
This research has influenced a shift in the international framework for tackling the proceeds of crime. It helped to move state practice away from a focus on formal compliance with the international rules to an emphasis on effectiveness and enforcement. Gilmore's monographs on Dirty Money (1995-2004) and appointments with the Council of Europe (CoE) — the body charged with coordinating government responses to money laundering — established a direct conduit for the uptake of research by transnational regulators. States regulated through CoE standards now focus intensively on confiscation of the proceeds of crime rather than on formal criminalisation of related activities.
Loughborough University research into financial regulation has had a significant and enduring influence on how regulatory bodies are structured and how they use economic analysis. This work has been credited with shaping the groundbreaking culture and methodology of financial regulation in the UK with respect to consumer protection, recognising the special characteristics of retail financial products and contracts and applying cost-benefit and regulatory impact analysis in decision-making processes. It has also played a major role in redefining financial regulatory structure in the UK and South Africa. In addition, the research is now being used to help develop and guide approaches to ensuring high standards of bank regulation and consumer protection across the EU through the European Banking Authority's Banking Stakeholder Group.
An AHRC and ESRC-funded Edinburgh research collaboration with the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovative Production (MOST), from 2007-2012, served as a key driver in the formation of regulatory structures, norms, knowledge and social understanding, helping to overcome state non-intervention in the regulation of regenerative medicine. As a direct result of engagement with the stakeholders in law/policy, medical and scientific communities, the research exposed a strong appetite for top-down legal intervention. This culminated in the first-ever model law presented by the MOST to the Argentine legislature (Congress) in 2013.