Ruth Plato-Shinar

Image of Prof.Ruth Plato-Shinar

Ruth Plato-Shinar is a full Professor of Law at the Netanya Academic College, Israel. She founded and heads the Center for Banking Law at the college. In the past she worked for the Legal Department of Bank Leumi and today she focuses on academic activities. Her fields of expertise are banking law, financial regulation, ethics and finance, social liability of financial institutions, consumer financial protection, means of payment and finance.

Personal life

Ruth Plato-Shinar was born in Tel Aviv on February 21, 1965.

She has LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from the Tel Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in Law from Bar-Ilan University. The subject of her doctorate thesis was “The Legal Nature of the Bank-Customer Relationship with respect to Safety Deposit Boxes”, supervised by Professor Sinai Deutch.

From 1991 to 1997 she worked as an attorney in the Legal Department of Bank Leumi. Currently she is focusing on academic activities.

She lives in Tel Aviv and is married with two daughters.

Academic career

Plato-Shinar has been a professor at the School of Law and the School of Business Administration at the Netanya Academic College since 1997.

She serves as the Director of the Center for Banking Law, which she founded at the Netanya Academic College in 2004.

Plato-Shinar served as a researcher at various institutions, including the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (Lausanne, Switzerland, 2006), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg Germany, 2007), Laboratoire de Droit Economique (Laboratory for Economic Law) at Luxembourg University (2008), Harvard Law School (2009), Hong Kong University (2012), University College London (2013), and Kings College (London, 2013).

Her main research areas are banking law, banking and financial regulation, business ethics and corporate governance in financial institutions, financial consumer protection, means of payment and financing methods.

She has been invited to lecture at law faculties of various universities around the world, including the Sorbonne Paris (2008), London School of Economics (2009, 2013), Padua University, Italy (2009), Touro College (USA, 2011), the University of Hong Kong (2012), Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada, 2012), Queen Mary University (London, 2013), Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, N.Y. (2014), University of Siena, Italy (2014), and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (2014).

She serves as a member of the advisory boards of the Asian Institute for International Financial Law, Hong Kong University, and at the Center for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University, London.

Since 2012 she has served as a researcher at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, participating in the project of “State responsibility, Boundaries of Privatization and the Issue of Regulation”, coordinating the field of banking regulation.

Plato-Shinar is a member of a number of law associations, including the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law (a board member from 2014), the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, and the Israeli Association for Private Law.

Public activities

• Member of the Advisory Committee to the Israeli Supervisor of Capital Markets and Insurance
• Public Representative, the Governmental Fund for Class Action Financing.
• Member of the Committee for Law Schools Programs in the Council for Higher Education.
• Member of the Public Committee of Maala – Businesses for Social Responsibility (a non-profit ranking body for corporate social responsibility)
• Co-Director of Ethics in Business and Finance, the Jerusalem Center for Ethics
• Member of the Society for the Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites
• Member of the Zaglembia Survivors Association (memorial association for the Jewish community of Zaglembia, Poland)
• Supporter of the establishment of cooperative banks in Israel

Awards and grants

Plato-Shinar's research on the subject of the bank's fiduciary duty gained her a Van Calkar scholarship from the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law in 2005, and a research scholarship from the Max Planck Institute of Comparative and International Law in 2006.

In 2007 she won the Ford Foundation Prize for Conservation & Environment, for her research on lenders' environmental liability.

In 2012 she was awarded a research grant from the Canadian Government's International Council for Canadian Studies, for research into the social responsibility of banks.

Women's leadership

In 2010, Plato-Shinar was chosen by the International Women's Forum to participate in their Women's Leadership Development Program (the Fellows Program). She is the third Israeli to participate in the program since its foundation in 1990. As part of the program she participated in the Women's Leadership Executive Education Program at the Harvard Business School, and in the “Women Leading Global Change” program at the INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France. On being chosen for the program, she received a grant from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.

In 2011, she was chosen to participate in a special project of the Internationales Institut fur Politik & Gesellschaft (International Institute for Politics and Society), Germany, in cooperation with the UN – UNICEF, on female leadership. She expressed her vision on personal empowerment and women's leadership in the book Female Leadership - Learning from the World’s Most Successful Women. The profits from the sales of the book, which has been translated into many languages, were given to UNICEF for the purpose of financing educational programs for girls in developing countries. As part of the project, she signed a call to the United Nations for universal access to education for women around the world.

She has often expressed her disapproval regarding the glass ceiling syndrome in the academic world, as well as her belief in the need to promote women to the highest positions at institutions of higher education.

Research

Plato-Shinar's research projects are in the field of banking and financial law, including banking law, financial regulation, business ethics and corporate governance in financial institutions, consumer financial protection, and related fields such as payment devices and financing methods.

Bank-customer relationship and banking consumer protection

In her various research projects there is a strong consumer orientation that emphasizes the need to provide extensive protection to banking customers. Accordingly, she favors the side of imposing strict ethical rules on the banks and the financial institutions regarding the relationship with their customers. However, she warns against imposing too wide a responsibility on the financial institutions, and she aims for a balance between the interests of the parties, while acknowledging the importance of maintaining the stability of the banking and the financial system.

One of her latest contributions is the imposition of a “duty of disclosure in the broad sense” on the banks. This duty includes not only providing informative data relating to a transaction, but also the duty to provide a broad explanation which includes a reference to all aspects of the transaction, as well as a duty to ensure – as far as possible – that the customer has indeed understood the nature of the transaction and agreed thereto. She proposes expanding the “broad duty of disclosure” to apply to guarantors and mortgagors as well. Her approach has been adopted by the Supreme Court in various rulings.

The bank's fiduciary duty

One of the main fields with which Plato-Shinar is identified is the bank's fiduciary duty. She has addressed this matter in many of the articles that she has published in Israel and abroad, as well as in her book, The Bank's Fiduciary Duty: The Duty of Loyalty, which was published in 2010 by the Israel Bar Association (in Hebrew).

Plato-Shinar presents a balanced approach to the bank's fiduciary duty. On the one hand, she favours the imposition of the fiduciary duty towards customers, guarantors and mortgagers as an instrument for ensuring fair conduct on the part of the bank. On the other hand, she emphasizes the need to determine reasonable boundaries to the duty. In addition, she has reservations about expanding the bank's fiduciary duty towards other third parties.

The views expressed in her book and her articles have been adopted by the Supreme Court in various rulings that dealt with the bank's fiduciary duty and became binding precedents.

Financial regulation

Plato-Shinar deals with various aspects of financial regulation. In particular she is interested in the tension between the two different fields of financial regulation: i.e. maintaining the stability of financial institutions ("Prudential Regulation") and financial consumer protection ("Conduct of Business"). A connected issue that she deals with is the structure of financial regulation and the division of roles between the different financial regulators. In this regard she expressed reservations about the adoption of the "Twin Peak Model" in Israel.

In addition, Plato-Shinar deals with the adaption of various regulatory models in the financial markets, such as soft law and ethical codes, with the role of international institutions as agenda setters and standard setters for the financial markets, with international regulations on cross-border banking, with bank secrecy, and with the issue of anti-money laundering.

Ethical, social and environmental responsibility of banks and financial institutions

One of Plato-Shinar's fields of research is the ethical and social responsibility of the banks and the financial institutions. In her opinion, although the goal of business organizations is to make profits, the profit factor is not the only consideration that should be taken into account. As organizations that manage the public's money, they are responsible for applying values of personal and organizational ethics and for ensuring their implementation in the organization's activities, even at the possible cost of damaging profitability. In addition, she dealt with the environmental liability of financial institutions.

Payment devices and financing methods

Another field of expertise of Plato-Shinar is payment devices. Based on her knowledge of the Law of Bills, Professor Aharon Barak, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, proposed that she write the second edition to his book The Nature of a Bill, which was published in the early seventies.

In addition, she dealt with the legal aspects of various financing methods, such as construction loans, overdraft facilities and credit lines. The precedent of the Israeli Supreme Court regarding attachments of overdraft facilities, is based on her article on this subject.

Selected publications

Books

• The Bank's Fiduciary Duty: The Duty of Loyalty (2010, in Hebrew)

Articles

• "Banking (Service to Customer) Law 1981; On the Absence of a Fiduciary Duty", Hukim – Journal on Legislation (2013, in Hebrew).
• "The Transformation in the Guarantor's Status – From the Case of Lippart until Today", Honorary Book for Justice Matza (2013, in Hebrew).
• "The Task Force's Payments Systems Review Report: an Outsider's View", 53 CBLJ 215 (2012).
• "Attachment of Overdraft Facilities; A few thoughts before a New Precedent of the Supreme Court", 8 Netanya Academic College Law Review 101 (2012, with Dr. M. Tzfoni, in Hebrew).
• "The Bank's Fiduciary Duty under Israeli Law: Is there a need to transform it from an Equitable Principle into a Statutory Duty?", 39(2) Common Law World Review 219 (2012).
• The Bank's Duty of Disclosure – Towards a New Model, 27 Banking & Finance Law Review 427 (2012).
• Lenders’ Liability for Environmental Damages in the Absence of Statutory Regulation - Lessons from the Israeli Model: Part 1, 5(5) Law and Financial Markets Review 367 (2011, with Prof. M. Gelpe).
• Lenders’ Liability for Environmental Damages in the Absence of Statutory Regulation - Lessons from the Israeli Model: Part 2, 5(6) Law and Financial Markets Review 458 (2011, with Prof. M. Gelpe).
• "Ethical Code – Does it Add Anything to Banking Regulation?", 27 Bar-Ilan Law Studies 261 (2011, with Prof. A. Geva, in Hebrew).
• "The Bank's Fiduciary Duty – The Israeli Model", 10 Law & Business Review 393 (2010, with Prof. A. Geva, in Hebrew).
• "Bank Secrecy under the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty and the New Constitutional Discourse", 8 Ono Academic College Law Journal (2009, in Hebrew) 719.
• "Three Models of the Bank's Fiduciary Duty, 2 Law and Financial Markets Review (2008, with Prof. Rolf Weber) 422.
• "Class Actions against Banks under the New Israeli Law on Class Actions", 26 Annual Review of Banking and Financial Law (2007) 255.
• "Bank Secrecy in Israel – Or its Residue", 29 The Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business (2007) 269.
• "An Angel Named 'The Bank': The Bank's Fiduciary Duty as the Basic Theory in Israeli Banking Law", 36 Common Law World Review 27 (2007).
• "Israel: The New Law on Class Actions", The Journal of Business Law 527 (2007).
• "Bank's Duty of Disclosure towards a Mortgagor of Assets Securing Debts of a Third Party", 49 Hapraklit L. Rev. 385- 402 (2007, in Hebrew).
• "Towards a Rational Model of Defenses in the Law of Negotiable Instruments", a book in honour of the Late Judge Azar 249- 284 (2007, in Hebrew).
• The Bank's Fiduciary Duty: A Canadian-Israeli Comparison", 22 Banking and Finance L. Rev. 1 (2006).
• "Construction Loans in Israel: Bank's Liability Towards Third Parties", 23(2) The International Construction Law Review 187 (2006).
• "Book Review: 'Banking Law: Guarantees given to Banks and The Pledge of Movable Property and Securities' by Prof. Ricardo Ben-Oliel," 1 Haifa Law Review – Din Udvarim 559 (2004, in Hebrew).
• "Israel: The New Legislation against Terrorist Financing," 11(4) Journal of Financial Crime 366 (2004).
• "Anti-Money Laundering Legislation Sacrificing Bank Secrecy and Fiduciary Duty," 3 Netanya Academic College Law Review 253 (2003-4, in Hebrew).
• "Israel: The Impact of the Anti-Money Laundering Legislation on the Banking System," 7(1) Journal of Money Laundering Control 18 (2003).
• "The 'Aval' Guarantee to a Bill, according to the Amendments in The Law of Guarantee", a book in honour of Chief Justice Shamgar (Articles, Part 3) 437 (2003, in Hebrew).
• "The Safe Deposit Box in Light of the Right to Privacy," 1 Kiryat Hamishpat 279 (2001, in Hebrew).

Other publications:

• "Towards a New Model of Bankers' Fiduciary Duty", 65 Banking Today 20 (The Hong-Kong Institute of Bankers, Jul/Aug 2012 (in Chinese and English).

External links

• Plato-Shinar’s home page on the website of the Netanya Academic College
• Plato-Shinar's SSRN page

References

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