Professor Emilios Avgouleas

Professor Emilios Avgouleas holds the (statutory) International Banking Law and Finance Chair at the University of Edinburgh and is the founding director of the Edinburgh LLM in International Banking Law and Finance. He currently serves as a member of the European Securities and Markets Group, the Stakeholder Group of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Emilios is a senior research fellow at Edinburgh University's blockchain lab and currently serves as a regular visiting Professor at the School of European Political Economy, Luiss Guido Carli. He is a fellow member of the academic board of the European Banking Institute (EBI) and research member/fellow of the renown European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a member (invited observer until membership confirmation) of the Monetary Comittee of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), the leading committee of central bank chief counsel and world experts in International monetary and financial law. He is currently engaged by the World Economic Forum (WEF)/Davos to conduct research on Systemic Risk, Innovation, and Technology in the context of the Great Reset. He is also acting as a consultant for the European Parliament for the general area of EU financial stability, Bank Resolution, and post-Covid 19 NPLs. 

Emilios is a leading international expert on financial reform, fintech policy and regulation, banking theory and regulation, capital markets regulation, law and finance, and global economic governance. He is currently involved in major research projects on Blockchain Technology, Money and Finance; Decentralised Finance and Capital Markets; and Sustainable Finance and world Economic Governance. He was previously a member of the Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority (EBA) (2015-2020), elected in the so-called 'top-ranking' academics section.

Emilios served in the Eurogroup Select Panel for the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) for 2 periods (2016-2020). He was a distinguished vis. Research Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong (HKU) between 2017 and 2020. He has served, at different times, as a distinguished visiting professor, visiting professor, visiting professorial fellow and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Tsinghua University, National University of Singapore, and the Hong Kong University-Duke Law Summer School. He is also Emilios a member of the sovereign debt group of the Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC) operating under the auspices of the Bank of England and a fellow member of the Royal Economic Society (RES). 

Emilios has published extensively in the wider field of law and finance, bank regulation and financial stability, International political economy, fintech architecture regulation and governance, behavioral finance and capital markets. He is the author of a large number of peer- review journal articles published by leading Journals around the world including the Journal of Financial Stability, JCLS, Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance, Law and Contemporary Problems, EBOR, ECFLR, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, Columbia Journal of European Law, etc. He is also the author of acclaimed research monographs: Governance of Global Financial Markets: The Law, the Economics, the Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Mechanics and Regulation of Market Abuse: A Legal and Economic Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2005). He co-authored the Principles of Banking Law (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 2018). He has also co- edited a number of books: Reconceptualizing Global Finance and its Regulation(Cambridge University Press, 2016), Capital Markets Union in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Political Economy of Financial Regulation (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector – Ten Years after the Great Crash (McGill University Press, 2019). He was the Guest co-editor of the Special Issue of the EBOLR (2019(20)) on Law, Finance and Technology and he is the Guest editor of the forthcoming Special Issue of the ECFLR (3/2021) on Digital Finance and EU Capital Markets.

Emilios was educated at the University of Athens (LLB) and the London School of Economics (LSE) from where he obtained his LLM and PhD in law and finance (1999).  Before joining Edinburgh in 2012 Emilios was the Professor of International Financial Markets and Financial Law at the University of Manchester.

Emilios teaches strongly inter-disciplinary courses on banking law and finance, financial regulation, capital markets law, and the law and economics of corporate finance both at the PG and the UG level and supervises a number of gifted PhD students. He has at various periods acted as Director of the Edinburgh Commercial LawCentre and head of subject area.

 An impactful scholar, Emilios' work is frequently  cited and commented upon in major Parliamentary and public policy reports, including  the UK Parliament's Enquiry on Banking Standards (which also adopted Emilios' conceptual definition of market abuse), EU Commission's Report on Short Selling, Australian Parliamentary Enquiry on Pensions, US Congress Inquiries, the House of Lords - EU Committee, the Irish Commission on Banking, as well as major think-tank and finance industry reports and submissions in major consultations on such diverse issues as banks and corporate disclosure regimes, long-term & sustainable equity markets, bank structural reform, and bank bail-ins. He is also often cited by the global media including the Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Until 2008 Emilios practised in the broader field of International and European financial law and structured finance. He worked as an Associate at the Derivatives and Financial Institutions Group of Clifford Chance LLP, as a Managing Associate at the Financial Markets Group of Linklaters.

With a  cosmopolitan background and focus Emilios has given keynote lectures, annual lectures, research seminars and conference papers in a plethora of academic institutions (Yale, Tsinghua, Oxford, Cambridge, HKU) and think-tanks (Carnegie, Chatham House, Bruegel, CIGI) and is often invited to speak to influential public policy organisations such as the Bank of England, the Basel Committee, the European Parliament, US Federal Reserve banks, and Singapore Monetary Authority.

He has also organised or co-organised both in Edinburgh and around the globe a series of very successful conferences High Level workshops and roundtables on systemic risk, bank resolution, and Financial technology with the latest examples being the Edinburgh High Level Financial Stability Roundtable on 26 March 2018