May/June 2009 / Cover Story
Executive Counsel Roundtable: Regulation and the Financial Crisis
Five attorneys, whose experience ranges from litigation and antitrust, to M&A and financial services, discuss the origins of the current financial meltdown, and the part that lack of regulation or “mis-regulation” may have played in precipitating the crisis.
Participants are Executive Counsel editorial advisory board members David Wingfield, partner at the Canadian firm WeirFoulds, and Kenneth Bialkin, partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, along with Mark Botti, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Michael Mierzewski and Alan Avery, partners at Arnold & Porter.
The attorneys consider potential consequences of short-term stimulus measures and what some consider the de facto nationalization of some major U.S. financial institutions. They weigh the pros and cons of “mark-to-market” versus “fair value” accounting, and express some skepticism about the need for a “super regulator” for previously unregulated financial entities.
The group arrives at a partial consensus that extraordinary government measures have been justified in order to kick start the economy and restore the credit system. But some participants express the view that short-term measures now being implemented could fundamentally alter the relationship between the free market and government, to the detriment of the long-range health of the economy.
