Civil Liability of Securities Underwriters

Following the Law and Economics tradition, this book looks at the civil liability of securities underwriters imposed in cases of material misstatements of corporate information by securities issuers from the perspective of deterrence. It follows the premise that securities underwriters can be efficient gatekeepers of capital markets as they are able to monitor the correctness and completeness of the issuer’s public statements and thus prevent misstatements of the material information. But what is so special about civil liability as an enforcement tool and how is civil liability used in the real world and does it actually achieve its goals? To answer these questions this book analyses underwriters’ civil liability regimes in the USA, the EU, the Netherlands and the UK.