https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/LEGS5979?type=COREThe aim of this three-credit course is to provide the students with a solid understanding of the fundamental institutions of the world of finance with focus on capital markets and securities industries and the connected regulatory framework. This includes first and foremost the scrutiny of various legal tools developed by the United States, as the most developed regulatory system of the world today, to 1/ protect investors, and to 2/ protect the integrity of the securities and capital markets. The topics chosen and the methodology primarily aims to approach this body of law from the perspective of lawyers. In other words, the course is not based on 'mathematicized economics' or financial modelling; rather it aims to explain things using the vocabulary of law instead of mathematical or economic formulas and theories. The federal securities regulatory framework of the United States will serve as the basic model, as compared to the main building blocks and idiosyncratic solutions of the regulatory systems of the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU). In addition to that - to profit from the unique opportunity that our university is located at the heart of Central Eastern Europe and has a diverse students body predominantly coming from this 'still transitory' region as well as Africa - whenever possible a special attention will be given to the countries or regions from where the students are from. This includes, in particular, various pyramid and Ponzi schemes that emerge and have most devastating effects exactly in this legal systems. Special attention will be given to such recent financial pathology phenomena as the collapse of Enron and the 2008 Credit Crunch as well as to securitization as a form of financial innovation playing a significant role in the context of latter.