This thesis intends to critically explore the legal obstacles currently undermining the recognition and enforcement process of foreign and international arbitral awards in the UAE arising out of the lack of the concept of international arbitration. it also tackles the practical implications caused by the lack of separate arbitration legislation and various legal aspects.

Over the centuries, English law has developed a ‘flexible’ and ‘malleable’ idea of property - in particular through the rules of equity - which has proved capable of adapting to the continuing changes in market practice. The question now to be addressed is whether this ‘flexible’ idea of property can also adequately represent interests in indirectly held securities or whether (as suggested by the Financial Market Law Committee) the new financial practice requires statutory clarification. Unlike most civil law systems, English law has been able to accommodate many new issues arising from the practice of intermediated securities within the existing framework. For example, the complex indirect holding structure is built on the well-developed institution of trust and sub-trust which allows investors to obtain equitable proprietary rights in the assets held for them by the intermediary. The proprietary characterisation of these types of rights has recently been challenged by McFarlane and Stevens, on the grounds that they seem to establish the same level of protection against third parties, by classifying the investors’ rights as ‘persistent rights’ or ‘rights against rights’. The main advantage of using the concept of a persistent right (rather than a proprietary right) is that it provides a better understanding of the legal structure of intermediation, as well as showing that no statutory clarification is necessary within the United Kingdom. The thesis tests the theoretical foundation of McFarlane and Stevens’ argument, using the current Lehman insolvencies as a platform for evaluation. The primary objective is to consider whether the idea of ‘persistent rights’ or ‘rights against rights’ is better able to explain the precise functions of this new practice and overcome the legal uncertainties typically associated with the indirect holding system.

This thesis takes as its starting point claims that practices of financial speculation in commodity derivative markets were instrumental in the causation of the global food crisis in 2007-08. Adopting an approach informed by critical legal studies, I seek to challenge dominant conceptions about the role that law has played in this context. Campaigners concerned about these practices place great faith in financial regulation as means of restraining ‘excessive’ speculation. Equally, those concerned with the vulnerability of poor communities to its effects — their condition of ‘food insecurity’, as it is designated in the prevailing discourse — turn to human rights, in particular, the right to adequate food, as a means of response. In both instances, law is positioned as the solution to fix malfunctioning markets. Examining the significance of law in the creation of the two global markets in question — one for a trade in financial instruments linked to food commodities, the other for tangible food commodities — I will consider whether this way of positioning law is accurate. I will explore the possibility that a preoccupation with regulatory solutions obscures other roles that law might play in global commodity markets. Focusing on the role law plays in enabling market behaviours, such as speculation, and in entrenching market entitlements that prevent equitable access to food, I will suggest that a body of law that is constituting and entrenching the market might stand in the way of regulatory ambition. The call for financial regulation to tackle food price volatility and for the strengthening of domestic legal regimes to protect against vulnerability is a call on the state to use law to constrain the excesses of the market in the interests of society. Is this a promising strategy, however, when the constitutive role of law and the state in facilitating the operations of the market is taken into account?

The thesis analyses the EC competition and US antitrust approaches to tying with special reference to economic thinking and intellectual property rights. It establishes that from an economic perspective that tying cannot be considered purely anticompetitive. Only when certain conditions are present is this the case: market power, an imperfect tied product market, which includes insufficient competition, high barriers to entry, and competitors' inability to compete with the dominant company's tied product package. Even in these circumstances, tying may have pro-competitive effects, which can outweigh the anti-competitive effects. While in the EC, competition law has completely overtaken the dealings with tying, in the US the Patent Act has adopted a per se legality approach only condemning tying when the intellectual property owner holds market power and applies the tying alTangement together with the patent to extend his patent monopoly to staple products. In comparison, competition law on both sides of the Atlantic see tying as (almost) illegal per se - almost because both jurisdictions require establishment of market power. A similar four-step test has.been applied in both the EC and the US: 1) market power in the tying product market 2) two separate products 3) anti-competitive effects on the tied product market 4) no objective justifications By assessing these steps in detail, the thesis identifies that when dealing with more complex products, technologically integrated products and products protected by intellectual property rights, the four-step test is inadequate and will often result in a wrong conclusion. The thesis therefore proposes a new test, which takes into consideration economic thinking, the recent reform debate of Article 82 of the EC Treaty, which has proposed a more economic approach to exclusionary behaviour and the fact that intellectual property rights do not always confer market power and also attempts to create greater legal certainty to ensure that despite having market power a company can tie when the pro-competitive benefits outweigh the anti-competitive effects.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is an examination of the ASEAN’s prospects in establishing regional competition policy in the Southeast Asia region, a topic of contemporary relevance in light of the ASEAN’s recent foray into the economic integration field on 31 December 2015. It questions whether the current approach undertaken by the ASEAN could contribute to an effective regional competition policy under the regional market integration. In answering this question, the thesis first critically surveys the current terrain of regional competition laws and policies in order to determine the possible existence of an optimal template. It argues that although the EU model is oft used as a source of inspiration, each regional organisation conceives different configurations of the model in order to best adjust to the local regional contexts. The thesis makes an inquiry into the narratives of the ASEAN’s competition policy, as well as the ASEAN’s specific considerations in the development of competition policy, before comparing the findings to the actual approaches taken by the ASEAN in its pursuit of regional competition policy. This thesis reveals that the actual approach taken by the ASEAN demonstrates an important discrepancy from the economic integration goal. The ASEAN applies a soft harmonisation approach regarding substantive competition law while refraining from establishing a centralised institution or a representative institution. The sole organ with regards to competition policy at the regional level is an expert organ. The thesis also conducts an investigation into the reception of the ASEAN’s regional policy by the member states in order to ascertain the possibility of the achievement of the ASEAN’s aspiration of regional competition policy. The study reveals that despite some shared similarities in the broad principles of competition law amongst the member states, the various competition law regimes are not harmonised thus creating challenging obstacle to the ASEAN’s ambition. The thesis then concludes that the ASEAN’s approach to regional competition law is unlikely to be effective.