The Institute of Bankers and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary College London, jointly hold an annual seminar on a theme relevant to banking law and practice. This book contains the main papers given at the 1985 seminar, updated to September 1986 with tables and index. The table of contributors presents the reader with a formidable array of leading experts that at the outset establishes the importance and quality of this publication and, in an informative Introduction, the editor, Professor Roy Goode, identifies the main issues and summarizes the contributions.

Professor Robert Pennington’s paper begins the book with a general analysis of how conflicts of interest may arise and shows how the equitable rules affecting fiduciaries came to have very wide application in the City owing to the frequency of an agency based business relationship. There is none more appropriate than Professor Jim Gower to present the second paper, on conflicts of interest and the City revolution, describing the events leading up to the Big Bang and the new regulatory structure and showing that “regulation of behaviour in situations of conflict is one of the major problems that will have to be solved”.

There then follow three papers considering generally the implications of conflicts of interest for banking, accountancy and the comparatively new financial conglomerates. The banking paper by Terence Prime contains a lucid and particularly perceptive account of the relevant legal rules, while the accountancy paper by Michael Fowle provides an invaluable and unusual insight into how accountants see their role in the business and commercial world and poses such unanswerable questions as: “Can you advise directors, … make recommendations on board level strategy, and then purport to be independent when you audit the results of your advice?” Philip Wood’s paper is an enquiry into the huge increase in the potential conflicts of interest as a result of the “linking-up of, on the one side, commercial and merchant banking, with, on the other, bankers and dealers in securities”. In the final paper, Lawrence Collins explores further tensions in the banking world which arise when securities legislation comes into conflict with the duty of confidentiality which banks owe to clients.

The is a timely and thought-provoking collection of articles on problems which those in the commercial world will have to grapple with for many years to come. The presentation is