ILF Guest Lecture on "Smart Contracts: Legal and Regulatory Insights" by Dr. Philipp Paech (LSE) on 30 May 2017

On 30 May 2017,  the ILF hosted a guest lecture on "Smart Contracts: Legal and Regulatory Insights" by Dr. Philipp Paech from the London School of Economics.  

Prof. Dr. Andreas Cahn, Executive Director of the ILF, welcomed about 30 guests and introduced Dr. Paech to the audience. Dr Philipp Paech joined the LSE in 2010 as an Assistant Professor of Financial Law and Financial Regulation. He is the Director of the LSE’s Law and Financial Markets Project and a fellow at the Institute for Law and Finance in Frankfurt. Before joining the LSE, Philipp spent many years at the heart of international legal and regulatory reform of the financial sector, working for the European Commission’s directorate for financial services in Brussels and for UNIDROIT in Rome. He is a qualified lawyer admitted to the Bar of Frankfurt. Philipp's principal research interest is international financial markets law and regulation, with a focus on legal devices for risk management and their influence on market liquidity. Recently, his work concentrates on financial innovation, including blockchain/dlt-related issues.

Abstract: Blockchain technology is often associated with a closely related phenome-non, the ‘smart contract’. The market is now exploring ways of using these concepts for financial assets, such as securities, fiat money and derivative contracts. The talk develops a conceptual framework for the governance of smart contracts in block-chain-based financial networks. It constructs a vision of how financial regulation and private law should set the boundaries of this new technology in order to protect market participants and societies at large, while at the same time allowing for the necessary room for innovation.