Giuliano G. Castellano

Reforming Non‐Possessory Secured Transactions Laws: A New Strategy?

Non-possessory secured transactions are key components of market economies. National and international legal reform projects have been advanced to further their use and broaden access to credit. Yet reforms appear to be limited by practical obstacles posed by national legal categories. This article shifts the focus from domestically defined categories to the operational rules that allow secured transactions to perform their economic function of managing credit risk. This shift leads to a reconsideration of the rules governing publicity and an examination of the policy issues underpinning the evolution of publicity. The article argues that international publicity standards, based on a registry system, could offer a new strategy for reforming secured transactions laws. The recently adopted UNCITRALs Registry Guide is analysed and considered as a possible tool for reforming national secured transactions laws.

Rising from the Ashes: A Governance Perspective on Emerging Systemic Risks

Unpredictable events -like an infrastructure failure such as a blackout (e.g. the 1999 southern Brazil blackout or the northeast blackout of 2003 that occurred in the US and Canada), a large-scale financial crisis with deep consequences on the real economy (e.g. the Icelandic and the Greek crises), a non-conventional terrorist attack (committed with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear weapons), the risk related to the exploitation of new technologies (typically nanotechnologies), or a geophysical event (as the 2010 volcanic ash crisis or the 2011 Japan earthquake) - may suddenly cause large-scale losses. The knock-on effect of these events grows beyond the direct social and economic impact on a specific geographic area, affecting simultaneously different regions and imposing immediate regulatory answers.