"In the UK we don't have venture capitalists with law degrees – otherwise known as the US plaintiffs bar"
Which is why litigation won't come to UK courts
"I just hope the regulators take the time and do it right"
"Which will entirely depend on their battle with the politicians"
One speaker expresses his wishes on credit crisis regulation
"We will still need an originate and distribute model, albeit in a different form. But I don't know the politicians will allow it."
"Certainly if McCain wins the US presidential race he won't"
In-house counsel bemoan the reactionary attitudes of politicians
"The SEC was rendered irrelevant in the Bear Stearns takeover. The Fed didn't even invite them into the room."
Is this the death knell for the SEC?
"The universal bank is the winner here, and the universal bank regulator – the FSA, not the SEC."
Even though Citi has taken such large hits from underwriting CDOs
"We had our best people with towels over their heads, trying to work out the economics of CDOs squared all night"
And if they can't figure it out, what chance have the investors got?
"Prospectuses never get finalised on structured products until the last day anyway. So what have investors been reading all that time leading up to the launch?"
One reason that more detailed disclosure is not the answer
"We've had some wonderful renaming of products. I had something I was sure was a CPDO described as a mean recession trading strategy. I think they made sure the acronyms have no letters in common."
One inventive way to try and sell structured finance products today
"First it was the sub-prime crisis – which to me was a 'blame everything on the US' attitude. Then it was the credit crunch – which is a breakfast cereal. Now it is the liquidity crisis, which is probably most accurate."
How do you refer to this thingy we are in?
"It's hard to sit up here and look down my nose at UBS with $39 billion of write-offs. We are a piker at only $35 billion."
Banks' woes aren't really relative
"People used to default on their house last of all. Now it's the first. Many people were taken from a trailer park and put in a home. They took a 110% loan and spent the 10% on a widescreen TV and a car. When they lost their job, they defaulted on the house, put the TV in the car and drove back to the trailer park."
"Compare this to the Japan crisis. They didn't have mark-to-market accounting so the loans sat there for a decade. This may have been bad in some ways but they didn't have to drive half a trillion dollars of losses through their P&L in a few weeks."
The answer, presumably, is something half way in between
"We've raised $30 billion in new capital. That's more than Deutsche Bank's total!"
One way to measure the scale of the crisis
"Complimentary Starburst – now this is a classy event!"
One way to measure a conference
"There aren't any war stories from Mifid – there hasn't been a war, just light skirmishes. The war has yet to begin."
The ongoing struggle for Mifid compliance. And this is at an investment bank
"On Mifid I was glad that I had the FSA. That's not something I say very often."
The UK regulator shines, once, in lawyers' eyes
"The various European regulators singularly failed to share the information they needed to."
Why Mifid's assumption of international cooperation is flawed
"The lady that does Mifid only does it on her weekends and she's about to go on maternity leave. I think she's only just finished reading level one."
The response of a Mediterranean regulator to one bank's reporting enquiry
"The death of New York is grossly exaggerated."
A US lawyer gets defensive over US listings
"A lot of permanent capital is like the Hotel California. You can check in but you can't check out."
Which is why Spacs are more popular
"Portal – the horse has bolted on that one. The idea that you can reinvigorate a paper-based system is stretching things a bit."
"I would tell my son not to do that, and I care about you almost as much."
An accountant rules out one type of pre-IPO discussion
"We need to clone you."
The attraction of a reasonable accountant
"I wouldn't say it's a stupid question, it's probably quite an intelligent question."
He asked how consistent shariah law can be
"Some are suggesting that shariah products should be reviewed annually, which seems contrary to the very concept to me."
Banks' counsel worry about having their deals pronounced illegal
"This may be controversial, but you could argue covered bonds were missold to start with. They are not a ratio product."
The folly of comparing covered bonds with supranationals and agencies
All of these quotes come from the IFLR European Capital Markets Forum which was held at the ANdAZ hotel in London on April 21 - 22 2008.