Press Release

Karanović & Nikolić Senior Associate, Katarina Gudurić, attended the 33rdInternational Financial Law Conference, recently held by IBA in Athens between 18-20 May. The event was a great opportunity for international lawyers with expertise in banking and securities law to (re)connect and exchange views on many hot topics in the area of banking and capital markets. The attendees were honoured to witness the keynote speech of Mr. Yannis Stournaras, Governor of the Bank of Greece, whose presentation focused on the financial stability in the recent turmoil filled times for Greece. More precisely, Mr Stournaras emphasised the fact that central bankers and supervisory authorities bear an enormous responsibility in shaping a system capable of delivering prosperity to the citizens of Europe, outlining that even though important progress has been made in securing the financial stability needed to deliver such prosperity, the job is still not completed.

Furthermore, with regards to the new tendencies and trends in the EU, one of the most interesting discussions belonged to the implementation of MiFID II, as it introduced a number of novelties into the legal framework. Most of these novelties were aimed at surpassing the identified challenges of MiFID and the overall impression was that it will be really interesting to see how and when Serbia will start preparing the changes of the relevant regulations in the process of ascending to EU. Other topics that proved to be of great interest for the participants included negative interest rates and their causes and consequences, in particular regarding the issues that most often arise in this context, and the ways in which these issues are best addressed.

The conference itself was labelled as a success by many of the attendees, with a variety of important learnings taken away from it. Hopes are high that these expert insights will soon find relevant situations to be applied in, both in national and international contexts.