Nordic Financial Market Law

This is the first presentation in English of the regulation of the financial markets in the five Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Financial market law has changed considerably over the last two decades, and this development has been further accelerated by the efforts to implement the 1999 Financial Services Action Plan by 2005. As a region, the Nordic countries are closely linked by history, culture and legal traditions. Furthermore, the NOREX alliance of stock exchanges now covers all the Nordic countries and provides the basis for a closely integrated capital market. This pan-Nordic market, combined with the tradition for legislative cooperation and mutual influences on law making, makes it important for practitioners and academics alike to understand the fundamental traits of Nordic financial market law, as laid out in this book.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I addresses the background, notably the interrelated history of the Nordic countries and the European context, and it provides a short comparative overview of some of the findings of Part II, which contains country by country reports from each of the five Nordic countries. Each report covers the following six topics: the markets and the actors; listing; corporate governance; obligations to inform (disclosure); market abuse; and takeovers. Finally, Part III explores the international cooperation of supervisory authorities and of stock exchanges.

The contributors are leading experts in financial market law in each of the five Nordic countries. This book is a companion to Nordic Company Law (2003) by J. Lau Hansen, which describes, in English, the regulation of public limited companies, which also has a high degree of similarity in each of the Nordic countries. Together, these two books give a unique insight into the legislation of this important region of Europe.