Since its establishment in 2011, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has become a pivotal actor in EU financial market regulation and supervision. Its burgeoning influence extends from the rule-making process to supervisory convergence/coordination to direct supervision. Reflecting the now critical importance of ESMA to how the EU regulates and supervises financial markets, and with ESMA at an inflection point in its evolution, particularly in light of the Commission’s 2017 proposals to reform ESMA and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, The Age of ESMA maps, contextualises, and examines ESMA’s role and the implications for EU financial market governance.

For academics and practitioners alike, if one wishes to gain a better understanding of how ESMA operates, there is no way around reading this highly commendable work. -- Markus Heidinger, Wolf Theiss, Vienna * Journal of International Banking Law and Regulation *
The Age of ESMA is intended to ask how ESMA has come to occupy a central position in EU financial market governance and the ramifications of its expanding influence ... This ambitious target is fully met and this book, to my mind, works as the much needed and most comprehensive review of the first years of operation of ESMA, up to its recently adopted reform in Spring 2019. -- Marco Lamandini * Common Market Law Review *
The Age of ESMA is an excellent piece of research: it is replete with facts, ambitious in identifying the key questions and cautious in both its answers and in drawing lessons for the future therefrom. Anyone with an interest in understanding how centralised (both on and off the books) EU financial markets regulation is should read it. -- Luca Enriques, Jesus College, Oxford * Cambridge Law Journal *

Niamh Moloney is Professor of Financial Markets Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Fellow of the British Academy.