The Columbia Law School/Columbia Business School Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets (https://capital-markets.law.columbia.edu/) and FINRA hosted a one-day conference on October 4, 2019, focused on the effects of recent, and reasonably anticipated future, technological change on securities markets.
Robert Cohen, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's first-ever Chief of the Cyber Unit served as keynote speaker for the event. In his remarks, Cohen brought to light insights on market structure, disclosures, digital assets, and trading investigations gleaned from 15 years of experience working within the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement.
The Technology Conference was a forum for the presentation of the two commissioned papers, one on legal issues, one on economic issues, as part of ongoing New Special Study of the Securities Markets Project. The paper examining legal issues was authored by Joshua Mitts of Columbia Law School. The paper examining economic issues was authored by Katya Malinova of the McMaster University DeGroote School of Business. Gur Huberman of Columbia Business School and Donald Langevoort of Georgetown Law Center served as commentators of the two papers.
Two panels, each consisting of a mix of academics, market professionals and technology experts, in a more free-form manner, addressed what the panelists saw as the coming impact of technical change on, the primary market, the secondary trading markets, and intermediary institutions and consider both the resulting opportunities for deregulation and the resulting needs for new regulation. Edward Greene, Pamela Marcogliese, Robert Walley, and Haimera Workie served on the first panel, focused on primary market issues and technology, moderated by Merritt Fox. Robert Farrokhnia, Joseph Hall, Sophia Lee, and Brandon Becker participated in the second panel focused on secondary market issues and technology, moderated by Lawrence Glosten.
An article highlighting the Technology Conference proceedings was published by Columbia Law School in November, 2019.
