Good morning.
I am here to tell you how it feels as an issuer.
My fellow panellists are going to focus on the facts of US regulation and its extraterritorial impact. I am going to operate on a much less elevated level.
I want to talk rather about behavioural aspects… About how foreign businessmen think about US regulation.
Don’t confuse us with facts: the perceptions are what counts.
And it is as much perception of culture, as of black-letter law or regulation.
Foreigners pick up countries’ culture from simple things.
We are talking about extra-territoriality.
Just as the UK did a century before, the US often confuses itself with the world or – “carelessly” as Chris Bates put it earlier, includes the rest of the world in its own arrangements.