15 US Jurisdiction

Subject(s):

Market abuse

This chapter provides an introduction to how US laws may apply to UK financial services activities by discussing aspects of four specific areas: antitrust, securities, commodity futures law, and the relatively recent Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. US legislation and regulations give the US government and private litigants a broad range of remedies for financial market misconduct which may have occurred wholly outside the borders of the US. A US judgment of market misconduct can result in the imposition of a variety of civil and criminal fines, injunctions, restitutions, imprisonment, and/or heavy civil damages. Unlike the UK, the prevailing party does not usually get significant costs (such as attorneys' fees); most civil trials can be tried before a local jury, and ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements are common.