The post-trading industry is one in which financial firms make money and one in which risk issues need careful management. Reliable payment, clearing and settlement structures are perceived to be essential to enable financial firms to withstand shocks. A great deal of the cost of trading and cross-border investment is attributed to the very complex process of clearing and settlement.

This book describes and explains:

1. what happens in clearing and settlement, and the roles of (and risks assumed by) the various participants in the post-trade marketplace
2. the law applicable to infrastructures, how they are are regulated, and the other topographical features of their legal landscape
3. the legal and practical aspects of risk management and operations of infrastructures
4. the risks faced by participants in payment, clearing and settlement systems - the agent banks - along with
practical and operational issues which they face in their roles.

Fully revised, updates for the 3rd edition include:

- Implications and impact of Brexit
- CPMI and IOSCO paper on central counterparty default (CCP) management auctions
- cyber-security and the resilience of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) and the wider market ecosystem.

Part I – Processes
1. Introduction to Clearing and Settlement
2. What happens in Clearing and Settlement
3. Trading
4. Post-trade support services
5. Cash
6. Securities
Part II – Regulation
7. International regulatory standards
8. Regulation of infrastructures in the United Kingdom
9. Legal form and governance of infrastructures
10. The Clearing imperative
11. Competition
12. Prudential regulation of agent banks
Part III – Risk and operations
13. Insolvency
14. Failure and rehabilitation of infrastructures
15. Interoperability
16. Risk management in payment systems
17. Risk management at CCPs
18. Risk management at CSDs
19. Risk management at the agent bank
20. Dividends, corporate actions and voting rights
21. Securities lending
22. Tax

“This sort of book is exactly what practitioners need to find orientation among the tsunami of regulatory developments” –  Markus Heidinger, Wolf Theiss, Vienna, Journal of International Banking Law and Regulation, (Review of 2nd Ed)

“This book is to be recommended to all who want to understand the working of the financial system and its likely evolution ahead of us” –  Alberto Giovannini, Chief Executive Officer of Unifortune and former chief policy advisor of the European Commission's Clearance and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring Expert Group, Foreword to the 1st Edition