Hal S. Scott
Director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation

Hal S. Scott is the Nomura Professor and Director of the Program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1975.  He teaches courses on Banking Regulation, Securities Regulation, International Finance and the Payment System.

He has a B.A. from Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School, 1965), an M.A. from Stanford University in Political Science (1967) and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (1972).  He is been admitted to practice in Massachusetts and various federal courts including the Supreme Court.  In 1974-1975, before joining Harvard, he clerked for Justice Byron White.

The Program on International Financial Systems engages in a variety of research.  Its latest project is Capital Adequacy Beyond Basel (Oxford University Press 2004), an examination of capital adequacy rules for banks, insurance companies and securities firms.  The Program also organizes the annual invitation-only U.S.-Japan, U.S.-Europe and U.S.-China Symposia on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century, attended by financial system leaders in the concerned countries.  The Program directs Socratic style dialogues among financial leaders on issues of current interest, for example the 2005 program on The Current State of Corporate Governance in the Global Marketplace co-sponsored by Business Week and Standard & Poors.   The Program also directs a concentration in International Finance for LLM students at Harvard Law School.

Professor Scott’s books include the law school textbook International Finance: Transactions, Policy and Regulation (14th ed. Foundation Press 2007) and International Finance: Policy and Regulation (Sweet & Maxwell 2004).  His recent articles include A Bankruptcy Procedure for Sovereign Debtors?, 37 The International Lawyer 103 (2003), Internationalization of Primary Public Securities Markets Revisited, in Capital Markets in the Age of the Euro: Cross-Border Transactions, Listed Companies and Regulation, eds. K Hopt, E. Wymeersch and G. Ferrarini (Kluwer 2002) and An Overview of International Finance: Law and Regulation, Chapter in Handbook of International Economic Law, eds. A. Guzman and A. Sykes (Elgar, forthcoming 2006).

Professor Scott is an independent director of Lazard, Ltd.  He is past President of the International Academy of Consumer and Commercial Law and past Governor of the American Stock Exchange (2002-2005).  He has served as a consultant to a variety of financial institutions, multilaterals and governments.