Justin O'Brien on Pleading Fraud: Creative Enforcement and the Politics of Blame

Download the Audio Podcast of this event here About the Event: In a 2009 speech to the IIEA on The Future of Financial Regulation (the video, audio and presentation slides of which can be accessed here), Professor Justin O'Brien described the difficulty of embedding integrity and accountability in the design of financial regulation. He also spoke of how common regulatory failures might be transcended by focusing on the interaction of rules, principles and social norms in capital markets. At this event, Prof. O'Brien will address the political context and ramifications of major financial fraud investigations currently underway in the US and EU, and discuss how these relate to current proposals for financial regulatory and supervisory reform in those jurisdictions. About the Speaker: Professor O'Brien is a specialist in the dynamics of financial regulation, with particular reference to capital market governance. He has written extensively on the intersection between regulatory form and ethical considerations. He is the recipient of a range of major grants from the Australian Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom. He is the author of a trilogy of books on regulatory politics: Wall Street on Trial (2003); Redesigning Financial Regulation (2007); and Engineering a Financial Bloodbath (2009). In addition he has edited a series of collections on corporate governance, including Governing the Corporation (2005); Private Equity, Corporate Governance and the Dynamics of Capital Market Governance and Corporate Business Responsibilities (2009). He is the co-editor (along with Iain MacNeil of the University of Glasgow) of a major new volume on the legal, policy and regulatory implications of the Global Financial Crisis. The Future of Financial Regulation (2010) was recently launched at the United Nations in New York. Professor O'Brien is currently a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He has previously held appointments at Queen's University, Belfast, Charles Stuart University and Queensland University of Technology. He has been affiliated to the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley as a Visiting Scholar and at the University of Glasgow, where he was Visiting Professor of Financial Regulation and Policy. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University division of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Prior to taking up a career in academia Professor O'Brien was an investigative journalist for a range of national and international broadcasters, including three divisions of the British Broadcasting Corporation - Network News and Current Affairs, BBC Northern Ireland and BBC World Service. He was also Editor of Television Current Affairs at Ulster Television in Belfast. He is a regular commentator on financial regulation in the national and international media and writes regularly for the Irish Times and the Australian Financial Review.