STREAMED ON WEDNESDAY, 19 JULY | 4PM HKT
Unlocking Finance for Small Businesses
Innovating Receivables Financing and Regulatory Reforms
Reg/Tech Lab's TechReg 360 is a discussion platform at HKU FinTech that highlights current issues, analyses and recommendations from global leaders on financial technology, regulation and sustainability.
Unlocking Finance for Small Businesses
Innovating Receivables Financing and Regulatory Reforms
Catch Dr Giuliano G. Castellano (HKU-Law, The University of Hong Kong) in a discussion about a recent report supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - EBRD:
New Finance Support: Receivables Finance for MSME Resilience and Economic Growth
In TechReg360's upcoming discussion, Dr. Giuliano G. Castellano highlights the recent EBRD report he co-authored, "New Finance Support: Receivables Finance for MSME Resilience and Economic Growth", which focuses on improving access to finance for small businesses through receivables financing. In an engaging conversation with host Ajay Shamdasani, he talks about the interdisciplinary effort required, the role of collateral and conventional bankers, the need for policy clarity and incentives, and the importance of a coordinated approach. They also touch on the checklist used by the EBRD to assess legal and regulatory requirements, challenges with a lack of guidance and uncertainty, and the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Wednesday, July 19 | 4PM HKT
Wednesday, July 19 | 9AM London
Streamed live via HKU FinTech's LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook.
The report is available for download at EBRD.
Click to listen.
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Previous TechReg 360 Discussion LINK
Topics discussed / Sneak Preview:
Driving Recovery: A Practical Approach to Unlocking Finance for Small Businesses Unlocking Development and Identifying Viable Companies: The Role of Receivables as a Screening Device Credit for Small Businesses: Exploring the Role of Mainstream Banking and Supply Chain Finance Post-Pandemic Recovery and Risk Mitigation: Balancing Public Intervention and Market Dynamics Parmesan Perks and Collateral Cheddar: Transforming Creditor-Debtor Relations with Cheesy Assets! Gaining Conventional Bank Support: Incentives, Coercion, and Overcoming Regulatory Challenges Bridging Legal and Regulatory Frameworks: Harmonizing Creditor-Debtor Rights in a Multijurisdictional Context Understanding Legal and Cultural Variances in Creditor-Debtor Rights: A Comparative Analysis A Pragmatic Approach for Policymakers and Regulators: Immediate Reforms for Enhanced Creditor-Debtor Relations The Transformative Potential of Blockchain Technology in Creditor-Debtor Relations Policy, Regulation, and Education: Insights for Policymakers, Regulators, and Students
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The EBRD-supported report was led by Catherine Bridge Zoller, Senior Counsel at the EBRD with support from Milot Ahma, Counsel, and Liubov Skoryk, Associate Counsel, in the EBRD Legal Transition Programme, and independent experts Marek Dubovec, Director of Law Reform Programs at the International Law Institute (Washington DC) and Giuliano G. Castellano, Associate Professor in Law and Deputy Director of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law at the University of Hong Kong. The technical contents on insolvency law and on technology law were provided, respectively, by Ignacio Tirado, Professor of Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law at the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid (Spain) and Douglas W. Arner, Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and RGC Senior Fellow in Digital Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Hong Kong. The report was also supported by Ignacio De Leon, Chief Executive Officer of the Kozolchyk National Law Center (Tucson, Arizona).
About Dr Giuliano G. Castellano
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Dr Giuliano G. Castellano is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, a Fellow at the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL), where he also serves as a Deputy Director, and a Fellow at the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Since 2010, Dr Castellano has been appointed as a Legal Expert for the Italian delegation at the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Working Group VI (security interests). In this capacity he contributed to drafting international soft-law instruments designed to promote access to credit, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions – adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2016 – and the UNCITRAL Practice Guide to the Model Law (2019) Giuliano’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of regulatory governance, international financial law and compliance with focus on securities, banking and insurance regulation. He published in renowned scholarly journals, such as the Modern Law Review, Law & Contemporary Problems and Fordham International Law Journal and his research received support from competitive grant schemes in different jurisdictions, such as the Impact Accelerator Account from the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Currently, he is leading several search projects focusing on the intersection between law, regulation, and technological innovations. In particular, he is the Principal Investigator of a project on “Creating Credit: Law Reforms, Policy Tensions, and Disruptive Technologies” funded by the General Research Fund (GRF 2020) of the Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council (RGC). Beyond academia, Giuliano has been working with international organisations and domestic governments to translate his research into concrete recommendations aimed to coordinate financial stability and financial inclusion policies. In particular, he has been participating in several projects focusing on the coordination between prudential regulation and secured transactions law in different regions, including Asia-Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and Northern Africa, and Sub-Sharan Africa. Most recently, his research and policy works have been featured in the Knowledge Guide of the World Bank on “Secured Transactions, Collateral Registries and Movable Asset-Based Financing” (2019). Giuliano holds a Law Degree from Bocconi University (Milan, Italy), a PhD in Economics and Social Sciences from the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris (with Highest Honours), and a PhD in Law from the Inter-University Centre for Law, Economics and Institutions and awarded by the University of Turin (with ‘no corrections’). His doctoral research was fully supported by the Vinci Doctoral Scholarship of the French-Italian University, an intergovernmental body promoting international cooperation between France and Italy in all scientific domains. Before joining HKU, he was based at the University of Warwick, School of Law. At Warwick, he was part of the Central Banking and Financial Regulation Qualification Programme, a postgraduate degree delivered by the Warwick Business School and the Bank of England. Prior to that, he was an LSE Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Law Department. Giuliano is regularly invited to speak in international academic conferences, training programmes for the industry or the public sector, and he delivered speeches for non-academic audiences, such as TEDx. He has been holding various visiting positions in different institutions, including the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford, the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Governance and Policy Department of the Moscow Higher School of Economics, the Faculty of Law of Paris-Dauphine University, and the Central European University.
About Reg/Tech Lab
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Led by Douglas Arner, a world-renowned expert in financial law and regulation, the Reg/Tech Lab is a global research and educational lab that focuses on the intersection of finance, innovation, sustainability, and technology. Through cutting-edge research and education initiatives, we strive to build better financial systems for the world.
More about: Professor Douglas W. Arner. He is the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law, an RGC Senior Fellow, and Associate Dean (Taught Postgraduate) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. At HKU, he co-founded and is the Faculty Director of the LLM Compliance and Regulation, LLM Corporate and Financial Law, LITE (Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship), and EAIEL (East Asian International Economic Law and Policy) Programmes. In addition, Douglas is Associate Director of the Standard Chartered Foundation-HKU FinTech Academy, a Senior Visiting Fellow of Melbourne Law School of the University of Melbourne, a non-executive director of NASDAQ and Euronext listed Aptorum Group, an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), and co-founder and an executive board member of the Asia Pacific Structured Finance Association. He is co-founder and former Director of the Faculty’s Asian Institute of International Financial Law. Douglas has served as a consultant with, among others, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UN, APEC, Alliance for Financial Inclusion, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Douglas specialises in economic and financial law, regulation and development. He is author, co-author or editor of eighteen books, including The RegTech Book (Wiley 2019), Reconceptualising Global Finance and its Regulation (Cambridge 2016), Financial Markets in Hong Kong: Law and Practice (Oxford, 2d ed., 2016), Finance in Asia: Institutions, Regulation and Policy (Routledge 2013), From Crisis to Crisis: The Global Financial Crisis and Regulatory Failure (Kluwer 2011) and Financial Stability, Economic Growth and the Role of Law (Cambridge 2007), and the author or co-author of more than 150 articles, chapters and reports on related subjects. His recent papers are available at SSRN [http://ssrn.com/authors=524849] where he is among the top 50 authors in the world by downloads. He is currently leading a major 5 year Hong Kong Research Grants Council Senior Research Fellowship project on the role of FinTech and RegTech in financial inclusion and the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as a 4 year RGC Research Impact Fund project focusing on FinTech policy and regulation. From 2012-2018, Douglas served as Project Coordinator of a major five-year project funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Theme-based Research Scheme on “Enhancing Hong Kong’s Future as a Leading International Financial Centre”. He is currently one of the core team of another TRS project focusing on digital finance, financial stability and financial inclusion. He led the development of one of the world’s largest massive open online courses (MOOC) on financial technology: Introduction to FinTech [https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-fintech], launched with edX in May 2018, now with over 100,000 learners spanning almost every country in the world, as part of the first online Professional Certificate in FinTech. Douglas has been a visiting professor or fellow at Duke University, Harvard University, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research, IDC Herzliya, McGill University, Melbourne University, National University of Singapore, Queen Mary University of London, University of New South Wales, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Zurich University, among others. He has lectured, co-organised conferences and seminars and been involved with financial sector reform projects around the world. Douglas served as Head of the Department of Law of the University of Hong Kong from 2011 to 2014. He was an inaugural member of the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council (2013-2019) and Director of the Duke-HKU Asia America Institute in Transnational Law (2005-2016), and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Centre for International Finance and Regulation from 2010-2016. In 2007, he received HKU’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award.
Guests on TechReg 360: Professor Lee Reiners (Duke Financial Economics Center | Duke University's Law School) and Sangita Gazi (Senior Research Fellow, Rutgers Law School | Research Associate, UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies | Policy Analyst, International Law Institute | Fintech Fellow, Banking and Finance Law Review | Postgraduate Research Fellow Asian Institute of International Financial Law)