2020. Securities and Financial Services Regulation

Abstract

COVID-19 clearly dominated many of the pressing issues in the world in 2020 and necessitated changes such as the suspension of wrongful trading provisions to help financially distressed firms and the restriction on share buybacks in the case of the CARES Act in the US for government bail-outs and by the MAS for financial institutions given capital adequacy relief in Singapore. It also brought greater focus back on the real economy as opposed to the over-financialized one that was described in the introduction to this chapter in the previous Annual Review. One positive thing to come out of a pandemic is that it may reduce the inequalities seen in the world since the 1990s, in particular, without the even greater upheaval that has been thought necessary to level society.

Keywords: Securities Regulation, Disclosure, Cryptocurrency, Exchanges, Crowdfunding