Ulrich G. Schroeter

Credit Ratings and Credit Rating Agencies

The present chapter discusses the characteristics of credit rating agencies and their credit ratings. In describing the role they both play on the global financial markets, it focuses in particular on the increasing importance that legal regulation has gained in the context of credit ratings, both due to the increase in regulation through credit ratings and the ongoing discussion about the regulation of credit rating agencies. The chapter inter alia addresses possible objects of credit ratings, the business models of credit rating agencies (including the conflicts of interest potentially resulting therefrom), the functions of credit ratings and credit rating agencies, the oligopolistic structure of the credit rating agency market, and the present legal regulation of credit rating agencies.

Verständlichkeit und Publizität im Recht der Schuldverschreibungen : das Transparenzgebot für Anleihebedingungen (§ 3 SchVG)

EnglishInforming investors about the rights attaching to a security is a goal of any disclosure-based regulation of capital markets. In practice, it has caused particular difficulties where complex financial instruments are concerned that are frequently not even understood by professional market participants. In reaction to this dilemma, the German legislator in 2009 introduced a new transparency requirement in § 3 of the German Act on Notes from issues of identical debt securities (Schuldverschreibungsgesetz) which resides in the borderland of securities regulation, contract law and market regulation. The article investigates the dogmatic nature of the new transparency requirement, scrutinizes its relationship to disclosure requirements and discusses in detail the prerequisites of § 3 SchVG including its interaction with the provisions on the control of standard terms in §§ 305 et seq. of the German Civil Code. In doing so, it demonstrates that defining the type of investor addressed within the terms of the bond opens a path to issuing also complex financial instruments in accordance with the transparency requirement. DeutschDie verstandliche Information des Anlegers uber die mit einem Wertpapier verbundenen Rechte zahlt zu den Zielen, die das Informationsmodell des Kapitalmarktmarktrechts verfolgt. Seine Verwirklichung erweist sich insbesondere dort als schwierig, wo es um komplex strukturierte Finanzinstrumente geht, die selbst professionellen Marktteilnehmern vielfach unverstandlich bleiben. Der deutsche Gesetzgeber reagierte hierauf im Jahre 2009 mit der Einfuhrung eines spezialgesetzlichen Transparenzgebots (§ 3 SchVG), das inhaltlich ein Novum im deutschen Schuldverschreibungsrecht darstellt und im Grenzbereich von Wertpapierrecht, Vertragsrecht und Marktrecht siedelt. Der Beitrag untersucht die dogmatische Einordnung des neuen Transparenzgebots, arbeitet dessen Verhaltnis zu publizitatsrechtlichen Regelungen heraus und konkretisiert die einzelnen Vorgaben des § 3 SchVG unter Einschluss von deren Zusammenspiel mit dem AGBRecht (§§ 305 ff BGB). Er zeigt dabei auf, dass durch die Bestimmung des angesprochenen Anlegertyps in den Anleihebedingungen die Begebung auch hochkomplexer Finanzinstrumente weiterhin moglich bleibt.

Die Vertragsstaateneigenschaft Hongkongs und Macaus unter dem UN-Kaufrecht

The applicability of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods of 11 April 1980 (CISG), the most important international convention unifying matters of international contract law, to an international sales contract according to Article 1(1)(a) CISG depends on both parties having their place of business in different Contracting States. The Peoples Republic of China was among the first States to ratify the CISG, meaning that all companies residing in the PRC do have - at least at first sight - their place of business in a Contracting State of the CISG. This result, however, causes difficulties when companies from Hong Kong and Macao are concerned, as these two territories were originally colonies of two States that did ratify the CISG (i.e. the United Kingdom and Portugal), and when returning to the PRC in 1997 resp. 1999, Hong Kong and Macao were given the status of Special Administrative Regions with a high degree of autonomy also in legal matters. Against this background, the present paper discusses the question of Hong Kong and Macao are to be treated as parts of a Contracting State under the CISG. It argues that the answer must be in the affirmative as Article 97 CISG expressly provides that a Contracting State comprising different territorial units has to make an express declaration if it selects not to apply the CISG to certain of its territorial units, and the PRC has not done so.