Droit bancaire et financier en Belgique – Bank- en financieel recht in België
A growing number of businesses are seeing their bank accounts closed and struggling to open new ones. An Antwerp diamond dealer, a cleaning company, a hospitality business, an arms manufacturer, a company holding a stake in a hospital in the DRC, a crypto broker, a real-estate company bought by a Russian citizen: superficially they have... Continue Reading →
Interest rate swaps (IRS) are derivative products known as hedging instruments. In a rising-rate environment, they offer the opportunity to determine and fix future costs on a credit agreement. They can also prove to be a dangerous speculative instrument. This is a brief analysis of how they work and of the legal issues they raise... Continue Reading →
The issue The characterisation of insurance-based investment products raises several questions about the regulatory framework applicable to insurance intermediaries and their liability for breach of the duty to advise. In its judgment C-542/16 of 31 May 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that financial advice on the investment of capital, given... Continue Reading →
The Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation focuses on certain categories of crypto-assets which are currently out of scope of existing regulations.
Three categories of grounds for terminating a credit agreement In Belgian banking and credit law, various events can bring contractual relations to an end. Legal scholarship groups the grounds for extinction of a credit agreement into three categories [1]. First, the modes of dissolution specific to intuitu personae contracts, where a circumstance affects the party... Continue Reading →
The guarantee, and the guarantee given free of charge in particular A guarantee (suretyship) is a person's undertaking (the guarantor) to secure another's debts (the debtor) for the benefit of a creditor. If the debtor defaults, the creditor, which may be a bank, may call on the guarantor to pay what the debtor fails to... Continue Reading →
In our articles on the SFDR Regulation (2019/2088) and the Taxonomy Regulation (2020/852), we recalled that one objective of the European legislator in framing sustainable finance was to increase transparency in order to prevent greenwashing. What is greenwashing? Greenwashing is the misleading use of claims of good ecological practice in marketing or communication. Under the... Continue Reading →
Opinion piece by one of this site's authors, published in the newspaper L'Echo on 1 June 2022. A more detailed analysis is available on this site. On 1 May 2022, L'Echo published an analysis of de-risking, the term used for the banker's reduction of its exposure to money laundering and the resulting unilateral termination, by... Continue Reading →
This article was published in the Forum de l'Immobilier, May 2022 (Anthemis). For over twenty years, the early repayment of a credit and the amount claimed by the bank in return for that early termination, whether called reinvestment indemnity, break indemnity or funding loss, have kept business people and banking and credit lawyers busy. The... Continue Reading →
FSMA communication of 1 March 2022. From 1 May 2022, the activities of certain virtual-currency service providers are regulated in Belgium. These providers must meet a series of conditions, notably as to their professional integrity and compliance with anti-money-laundering legislation. Who is covered by the new rules on crypto and virtual-currency services? Providers of exchange... Continue Reading →
This article is part of our International Sanctions and Restrictive Measures guide. Note: this analysis dates from late February 2022 and describes the sanctions context of the time; it remains of general interest on the SWIFT mechanism. The context and the SWIFT company On 26 February 2022, the leaders of the European Commission, France, Germany,... Continue Reading →
This article is part of our International Sanctions and Restrictive Measures guide. Note for readers: the specific sanctions measures described here date from late February 2022 and have since been considerably expanded. The analysis of the sanctions regime and of the role of banks, below, remains of general application. Following Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk... Continue Reading →
Within the Belgian courts, a large share of seriously contested credit disputes still turns on funding loss and the early repayment of fixed-term credit and loans concluded between a bank and a business before the Act of 21 December 2013 on SME financing entered into force. The issue The question is whether a business may... Continue Reading →
On the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 6 June 2019 on consumer credit. A consumer credit granted, solar panels paid for but never delivered A bank had financed a consumer's purchase of solar panels. The credit amount was paid to the consumer, then to the manufacturer and installer. The... Continue Reading →
In an article of November 2021 on the basic banking service for businesses, meant to resolve the difficulties and refusals businesses face when opening a bank account, we discussed the liability of the Belgian State towards businesses left unable to open an account. We also raised the prospect of the State being held liable for... Continue Reading →
A judgment of the French-speaking Brussels Enterprise Court restates the principles of limitation, which resonate particularly in operations on financial instruments. The facts: a swap and a fall in EURIBOR, non-contractual liability? The case pitted a family company in the timber sector against its bank. The company had credit lines at the variable EURIBOR rate.... Continue Reading →
A general duty of vigilance over one's bank accounts In banking law, every client, like any prudent and diligent person, must pay attention to his bank accounts and to the transactions passing through them. Every client must also collect his account statements regularly and promptly dispute any abnormal or unauthorised transactions. Silence, or the absence... Continue Reading →
As we noted in our first article on sustainable finance, climate issues are now among the financial sector's concerns. To better gauge the stakes of this green (r)evolution, droitbancaire.be looks back in this article at the historical context that led to the regulatory changes and examines the European Taxonomy. Sustainable finance in Europe: a historical... Continue Reading →
Towards an awareness of sustainable finance? Until recently, climate issues were not among the financial sector's concerns. Today we are seeing a reversal. The terms sustainable finance, responsible investment and green finance are used by all players in the sector. Greenwashing or genuine awareness? (Greenwashing: the misleading use of arguments claiming good ecological practices in... Continue Reading →
Through a concrete case of a lost bank card and fraudulent transactions on a client's account, we revisit the respective responsibilities of the bank and the client in payment services matters, much as in phishing cases. The client who believed his card had been swallowed A client carried out banking operations at an ATM inside... Continue Reading →
