International Finance
Capital crosses borders only inside a thicket of rules, and this category maps it.
The explainers explain the major European frameworks, MiFID II investor protection and best execution, MiFIR transparency, EMIR, UCITS, AIFMD, and PRIIPs, together with market-abuse regulation, covering what each regime demands and the reason it exists.
Investing With Purpose keeps the treatment practical instead of legalistic, so you see how cross-border rules actually shape trading, fund structures, and disclosure.
Taken together, these regimes decide how global money is allowed to move and trade.
For anyone investing or working across jurisdictions, this is the map of the regulatory landscape you are already operating inside.
A currency peg is a policy that fixes the exchange rate of a country's currency to another currency, a basket of…
Capital controls are rules that restrict cross-border movement of money. Governments use them to blunt speculative…
An IMF program is a lending arrangement between the International Monetary Fund and a member country facing…
Emerging market sovereign debt comes in two main flavors: **external debt** denominated in a hard currency like US…
De-dollarization is the hypothesis that the US dollar is losing its dominant position in global finance, whether as a…
FINRA Rule 2010 is the broad ethics standard that requires every brokerage firm and registered person to act with…
FINRA Rule 2020 is the general antifraud rule for brokerage firms. It bans any manipulative, deceptive, or fraudulent…
The CSRC China securities regulator is the government body that oversees mainland China's stock and futures markets. It…
The HKMA Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the city's central banking institution. It defends the Hong Kong dollar's peg…
The Japan FSA Financial Services Agency is the government body that regulates the country's banks, securities firms,…
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is the country's central bank and its single financial regulator rolled into one…
The SEBI India securities regulator is the body that polices one of the world's fastest-growing equity markets. It…
The FSC Korea Financial Services Commission is South Korea's top financial regulator, the body that writes the rules…
The ASIC Australia securities regulator is the country's combined corporate, markets, financial services, and consumer…
The impossible trinity is the rule that a country cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free…
Sovereign debt restructuring is the process of renegotiating a government's obligations when the country cannot pay…
A balance-of-payments (BoP) crisis occurs when a country's foreign exchange reserves are insufficient to meet external…
Emerging-market currency crises repeat. The specific country changes, the decade changes, but the underlying…
A currency peg attack is a coordinated speculative trade against a central bank committed to defending a fixed exchange…
The sovereign CDS basis is the difference between the premium on a sovereign credit default swap and the credit spread…
EM local-currency bonds are sovereign debt issued in the home currency rather than in dollars or euros. They remove the…
An FX carry unwind is a rapid, forced exit from currency carry positions when funding conditions tighten, risk aversion…
The euro sovereign crisis of 2010-2012 was a monetary-union failure mode that had no precedent. Peripheral sovereigns…
The March 2012 Greek Private Sector Involvement (PSI) remains the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history by…
Argentina has defaulted on its external debt nine times since independence in 1816 and three times in the past quarter…
A cross-currency basis swap exchanges principal and floating interest payments in two different currencies, with an…
The Eurodollar market is the pool of US dollar deposits and short-term loans held at banks outside the United States.…
SWIFT is a global messaging network that banks use to instruct cross-border payments. CHIPS is the private US dollar…
A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment vehicle that manages a country's surplus savings, commodity…
Covenants in emerging market sovereign bonds are the contractual terms that define what a borrowing government must do,…
Dollar funding stress is the condition in which non-US banks, corporates, and investors cannot obtain short-term US…
The LIBOR to SOFR transition replaced the London Interbank Offered Rate with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate as…
SOFR is the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, a volume-weighted median of overnight Treasury repo transactions…
A currency peg regime ties a country's exchange rate to an anchor, usually the US dollar, the euro, or a basket, with…
A currency board is the strictest form of peg. The monetary authority commits to exchange domestic currency for an…
A managed float is a hybrid. The exchange rate is allowed to move with market forces, but the central bank intervenes…
IMF quotas are the capital contributions member countries make to the Fund, and they determine voting power, access to…
The IMF and the World Bank are the twin Bretton Woods institutions, created at the same 1944 conference, headquartered…
The Bank for International Settlements is the bank for central banks. Founded in 1930, based in Basel, and owned by 63…
The OECD tax framework is the set of soft-law standards and treaty models that govern how multinational enterprises are…
Pillar One reallocates a slice of the largest multinationals' profits to the countries where their customers and users…
Cross-border supervision is the system through which the regulator of a bank's head office (home) and the regulators of…
Capital account liberalization is the process of removing restrictions on cross-border financial flows: portfolio…
MiFID II investor protection is the set of conduct rules that EU investment firms must follow to put clients' interests…
MiFID II best execution is the duty of an EU investment firm to take all sufficient steps to obtain the best possible…
MiFIR transparency is the EU regime that requires trading venues and firms to publish quotes before trading and trade…
EMIR derivative clearing rules force most standardised over the counter swaps through a central counterparty, so that…
CSDR settlement discipline is the EU regime that charges cash penalties when a securities trade fails to settle on…
SFTR securities financing reporting is the EU rule that forces firms to report repos, securities loans, and similar…
AIFMD, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, regulates the managers of hedge funds, private equity, real…
UCITS funds are the EU standard for regulated retail investment funds, built around strict diversification and…
The PRIIPs KID is a short, standardised disclosure that EU retail investors must receive before buying many investment…
The Market Abuse Regulation, known as MAR, is the EU rulebook against insider dealing, unlawful disclosure of inside…
The EU Short Selling Regulation, or SSR, sets rules for short selling shares and sovereign debt, including disclosure…
The SFDR sustainable finance disclosure rules require EU fund managers and advisers to spell out how they handle…
MAR inside information disclosure is the duty under Article 17 of the EU Market Abuse Regulation for a listed issuer to…
TRS reporting rules are the disclosure and trade-reporting obligations that attach to total return swaps, a derivative…
The EU Listing Act is a package of reforms that makes it cheaper and simpler for companies to list shares and bonds on…
DORA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, is the EU regulation that forces financial firms to withstand, respond…
MiCA is the European Union's first comprehensive rulebook for crypto. Formally Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, the MiCA…
DAC6 is the EU rule that requires advisers and taxpayers to report certain cross-border tax arrangements to their…
AMLA is the new EU agency built to fight money laundering and terrorist financing across borders. Created by Regulation…
The UK PRA, the Prudential Regulation Authority, is the part of the Bank of England that keeps banks and insurers…
The SEC net capital rule 15c3-1 sets the minimum liquid capital a US broker-dealer must keep on hand at all times. It…
The SEC customer protection rule 15c3-3 makes a broker-dealer keep its customers' cash and securities separate from its…
The SEC Rule 3a4-1 broker safe harbor lets certain people sell their own company's securities without registering as a…
FINRA Rule 2210 governs how brokerage firms talk to the public. It sorts every communication into three buckets, sets…
FINRA Rule 3110 requires every brokerage firm to build and run a supervisory system reasonably designed to catch and…
FINRA Rule 4511 sets the general recordkeeping requirements for brokerage firms. It tells firms which books and records…
FINRA Rule 5310 requires brokerage firms to seek the best reasonably available terms when handling customer orders. It…
FINRA Rule 6730 requires brokerage firms to report their bond trades to TRACE, the system that publishes fixed-income…
Regulation A+ lets smaller companies raise capital from the general public, including non-wealthy investors, without a…
Regulation D is the set of SEC rules that let companies raise money privately without registering a public offering.…
Regulation Best Interest, known as Reg BI, requires a broker-dealer to act in a retail customer's best interest when…
Regulation FD fair disclosure is the SEC rule that bars a public company from handing material nonpublic information to…
Regulation SHO short selling rules are the SEC framework that governs how shares are borrowed, sold short, and…
Regulation ATS dark pools rules let a venue match buyers and sellers like an exchange without registering as one, as…
Rule 606 order routing disclosure is the SEC requirement that forces brokers to publish where they send customer orders…
Rule 201 alternative uptick is the SEC short sale price test that switches on after a stock falls 10% in a day. Once…
The limit up limit down LULD plan is a national market system mechanism that stops trades from happening outside moving…
MSRB municipal securities rules are written by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, the self-regulatory body…
A SEBI foreign portfolio investor, or FPI, is the legal channel through which overseas funds buy Indian listed shares…