US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox recently observed at an international regulatory meeting in London that "financial transactions are crossing national boundaries faster than ever before," and that "the world's exchanges are now beginning to combine their operations in order to more closely integrate the world's capital markets". Cox concluded that national regulators "have no choice but to cooperate".
European securities regulators are responding to this environment by bulking up their enforcement muscle and bringing large enforcement cases that increasingly have the look and feel of the SEC's cases in the US markets. In the last few years, Europe has created new and far more potent securities regulatory bodies that are beginning to make their presence felt. And EU member states are implementing EU directives to achieve genuine cross-border convergence in securities regulation.
We can expect to see an ever-increasing number of cross-border enforcement investigations involving two or...