In stating our intention to reconcile the rules of financial law and the rules of conflict of laws, we wanted to take advantage of the resulting synthesis to make a diagnosis of the discipline and possibly reveal its deficiencies. Two of them can be highlighted: the contradiction of the objectives of financial law and a complex relationship with common law. A general solution to these difficulties consists in precisely delimiting the interactions of financial law with the various branches of common law in order to account for the reasons why a specific objective justifies the enactment of a special rule. In this delimitation exercise, the methodology of private international law can provide valuable assistance. At the same time, it is intended to show the undeniable contributions of the international application of financial law to the theory of private international law.

Contradictory objectives. The tension that financial law rules are subject to is first of all exacerbated by the sometimes contradictory nature of the objectives they pursue, between the liberalism to which the matter aspires and the protection of investors that it requires. The implementation of commercial operations requires speed and security, which we agree justify the existence of derogatory solutions. However, these solutions may come up against the objective of investor protection, which is not necessarily satisfied with the freedom-responsibility pairing created by this first objective. In this respect, the current point of balance lies in the abundance of information that financial law requires issuers to provide in order to market their securities; it is not certain that this abundance truly allows for the protection of investors by enlightening their consent, unless, precisely, they are investment specialists. This is all the more true since only the latter are in a position to engage the civil liability of issuers who disseminate defective information by proving the causality between the latter and their investment decision or their investment advice. This means that other investors will be better protected by imposing rules of conduct on intermediaries to protect clients, together with prudential rules to ensure their solvency and integrity. The protection of the financial market itself, where financial instruments are admitted to it, is in principle ensured by the administrative and criminal liability of issuers and investors.