The collapse of the Chinese equity capital markets from mid-2015 to early 2016 captured the attention of the world, and elicited a blunt response from central organs of the PRC party state. That heavy-handed response included a moratorium on new issues, mandatory infusions of capital from state-controlled securities companies and funds, and direct prohibitions on market trading. The crash and the “market saving” response by the Chinese government occurred as the National People’s Congress (NPC) of the PRC undertakes a wholesale revision of China’s 2006 Securities Law designed to create increasingly autonomous and ultimately capital allocation-efficient capital markets for China. As a member of the Asian Development Bank expert group advising China’s NPC on revision of the Securities Law, Professor Howson will address critical issues implicated by amendment of the Securities Law and restructuring of the securities regulatory system for China, with a particular emphasis on the political legal implications of those proposed changes, and what they mean for China’s developing law and legal institutions and the decades-old “Socialist market economy under law” reform program.
About the speaker: Nicholas Calcina Howson is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. A former partner of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, he worked out of that firm’s New York, Paris, London and Beijing Offices, finally as a managing partner of the firm’s Asia Practice based in the Chinese capital.
