Description

About the Seminar

This lecture addresses the connections between common law doctrines in the law of contract – including formation rules, incorporation of terms, and implied terms – and modern investment contracts, with their detailed standard provisions. It inquires as to when and how regulatory rules aimed at investor protection are integrated into the contractual framework, or when and how they override the contractual terms. It also addresses case law where, controversially, it has been held that investor protection standards are overridden or ‘watered down’ by contractual provisions. The common law was traditionally unafraid to set minimum standards for the supply of goods or their carriage, but has been less sure-footed with financial instruments. Recent case law on implied terms and claims by investors against on-line investment platforms – offering foreign exchange trading, spread betting, cryptoassets and other derivatives – will be surveyed.

About the Speaker

Professor Gerard McMeel KC is Professor of Commercial and Financial Law at the University of Reading, and was previously a Professor at Manchester and Bristol. He practises from Quadrant Chambers in London, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2020. Gerard practises in all areas of commercial dispute resolution, with a particular focus on banking and financial services litigation. Gerard’s recent cases include the leading case on
the meaning ‘investment advice’ in UK law, in Adams v Options [2021] Bus LR 1568, Adactive Media v Ingrouille [2022] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 235 on an allegedly inconsistent choice of court agreement and arbitration clause, and Dooley v Castle Trust [2022] EWCA Civ 1569, which raised difficult issues
at the interface of private international law and investor protection law. Perhaps his most famous investor client remains Alan Shearer: Alan Shearer v Kevin Neal [2020] EWHC 3272 (Comm). As an academic lawyer, Gerard specialises in contract law, unjust enrichment, commercial law, banking
law and financial services law and regulation, He is the author of McMeel on the Construction of Contracts – Interpretation, Implication and Rectification (4th edn, 2023, forthcoming). He is a co-author of the leading practitioner text on personal property law.