The ILF together with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer hosted the 7th Annual Conference on the Banking Union on 18 November 2020. As the case every year since its launch, the Annual Conference on the Banking Union brought together European and domestic supervisors and regulators, financial industry experts, legal advisers and academics who discussed the current state of play in the banking sector with a strong focus on regulatory and supervisory issues. This year’s conference was also held in cooperation with the Euro Finance Week.
The welcoming remarks were made by Prof. Dr. Andreas Cahn, Executive Director of the ILF, and Dr. Alexander Glos, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
The first digital conference of the series was divided into Part 1 "The regulatory agenda for the decade ahead" and Part 2 "BigTech and financial regulation".
The first part commenced with the speech "The Yin and Yang of banking market integration – the case of cross-border banks" given by Mr. Andrea Enria, Chair of the Supervisory Board, European Central Bank followed by 15 minutes of Q&A moderated by Dr. Janina Heinz, Counsel, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The second lecture "AML – on the brink of a new regime" was presented by Mr. Thorsten Pötzsch, Chief Executive Director of Resolution Directorate, Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). He was followed by Ms. Karen Kuder, General Counsel, Deutsche Bank AG, who spoke about "Single Resolution Fund Contributions – Recent Developments".
The subsequent panel discussion consisted of the former speakers, the moderator Mr. Markus Benzing, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Ms. Elizabeth McCaul, Member of the Supervisory Board, European Central Bank and Ms. Silvia Schmitten-Walgenbach, Chair of the Board, The Association of Foreign Banks in Germany.
The second part of the conference was opened by Ms. Ksenia Duxfield-Karyakina, Public Policy and Government Affairs Manager, Head of Finance Policy, Google Cloud EMEA, with her presentation "Cloud-driven innovation in the European banking sector. Strengthening operational resilience: technology and regulatory aspects". Thereafter, Mr. Jan Ceyssens, Head of Digital Finance Unit, DG FISMA, European Commission talked about "Overseeing critical ICT providers - the Commission proposals in the digital operational resilience act".
His speech was followed by a second panel discussion involving questions raised by the audience. The panel discussion was chaired by Prof. Dr. Georg Ringe, Professor of Law & Finance and Director of the Institute of Law & Economics at the University of Hamburg, Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and consisted of the speakers of the second panel, Mr. Torsten Schreier, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Ms. Maria E. Tsani, Head of Financial Services Public Policy EMEA at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Mr. Andreas Krautscheid, Chief Executive of Bundesverband deutscher Banken e. V.
The 7th Annual Conference on the Banking Union was closed with remarks made by co-host Dr. Alexander Glos, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
