Douglas W. Arner is a Senior Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, Kerry Holdings Professor in Law, RGC Senior Fellow in Digital Finance and Sustainable Development, and Associate Director of the HKU-Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy as well as principal of the Reg/Tech Lab at the University of Hong Kong. He is Associate Dean (Taught Postgraduate and Development) of the HKU Faculty of Law and co-founder and former Director of HKU’s Asian Institute of International Financial Law, as well as Faculty Director and co-founder of the LLM in Compliance and Regulation, the LLM in Corporate and Financial Law, the Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (LITE) Programme, and the East Asian International Economic Law and Policy Programme. He served as Head of the HKU Department of Law from 2011-2014, as Director of the Duke University-HKU Asia America Institute in Transnational Law from 2005-2016, as an inaugural member of the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council from 2013-2019, and as Board Member of the Australian Centre for International Finance and Regulation from 2012-2016. In 2020 he was awarded an inaugural Hong Kong Research Grants Council Senior Fellowship to study the role of digital finance in financial inclusion and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Douglas is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Melbourne Law School of the University of Melbourne, a Visiting Professorial Fellow of the Faculty of Law of UNSW Sydney, a non-executive director of NASDAQ and Euronext listed biotechnology firm Aptorum Group, an Advisory Board Member of the Global Impact FinTech (GIFT) Forum, SuperCharger Ventures, Policy 4.0, the International RegTech Association, the Alliance for Innovative Regulation and of the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), and co-founder and an executive board member of the Asia Pacific Structured Finance Association. Douglas has published twenty books and more than 200 articles, chapters and reports on finance, technology, regulation and development, including most recently FinTech: Finance, Technology, Regulation (Cambridge 2023 forthcoming, with Ross Buckley and Dirk Zetzsche), Reconceptualising Global Finance and its Regulation (Cambridge 2016) (with Ross Buckley and Emilios Avgouleas) and The RegTech Book (Wiley 2019) (with Janos Barberis and Ross Buckley). His recent papers are available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=524849, where he is among the top 50 authors in the world and among the top 15 Law authors by total downloads. Douglas led the development of Introduction to FinTech – launched with edX in May 2018 and now with over 100,000 learners spanning almost every country in the world – and the foundation of the edx-HKU Online Professional Certificate in FinTech, both nominated for the edX Prize and awarded the HKU Teaching Innovation Award. In addition, he has served as a consultant with, among others, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, IMF, UN, APEC, Alliance for Financial Inclusion, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He has lectured, co-organised conferences and seminars and been involved with financial sector reform projects around the world. Douglas has been a visiting professor or fellow at Duke, Harvard, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research, IDC Herzliya, McGill, Melbourne, National University of Singapore, UNSW Sydney, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Zurich, among others.

Research and Publications

Zetzsche, D., Arner, D., & Buckley, R. (2026). A summary of “Decentralized Finance.” In The Blockchain Scholars (pp. 105–109). Springer. 

Charamba, K., Shum, Y. Y. J., & Arner, D. W. (2025). Building Castles in the Sky?: The Myth of Decentralized Finance and the Necessity of Legal Ordering. Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 25(1).

Zetzsche, D. A., Unterstell, M., Buckley, R. P., & Arner, D. W. (2025). Towards a EU Impact Investing Framework. Available at SSRN 5740462.

Zetzsche, D. A., Unterstell, M., Buckley, R. P., & Arner, D. W. (2025). Datafying sustainable finance: Efficiency and impact by design. European Law Journal, 31(3), 203-226.

Arner, D., Buckley, R. P., Veidt, R., & ZETZSCHE, D. A. (2025). Regulatory Sandboxes and Innovation Hubs. 0-19-286876-4.

ZETZSCHE, D. A., Schwarcz, S. S., & Arner, D. W. (2025). Foreword to" Regulating Digital Currencies". Law and Contemporary Problems, 87(2).

Arner, D. W., Wang, C. M. L., Buckley, R. P., & Zetzsche, D. A. (2025). Building Open Finance: From Policy to Infrastructure. CFTE Academic and Industry Paper Series, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE).

ZETZSCHE, D. A., Schwarcz, S., & Arner, D. (Crit. Eds.) (2025). Digital Assets and Cryptocurrencies. Law and Contemporary Problems, 87 (2).

Arner, D.W., Wang, C.M.L., Buckley, R.P. and Zetzsche, D.A., 2025. Building Open Finance: From Policy to Infrastructure. CFTE Academic and Industry Paper Series, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE).

Arner, D.W., Ratna, T., Animashaun, S., Bedi, J. and Mishra, N., 2025. Centralization in Decentralized Finance: Systemic Risk in the Crypto Ecosystem and Crypto's Future as a Regulated Industray. Law and Contemporary Problems, 87(2), pp.185-210.  

Zetzsche, D.A., Buckley, R.P., Arner, D.W. and Unterstell, M., 2024. Mixed-Activity Groups (MAGs) in the EU: Financial Services Assessment and International Trends.  

Castellano, G.G., Selga, E. and Arner, D.W., 2024. The Emergence of Financial Data Governance and the Challenge of Financial Data Sovereignty. Data Sovereignty: From the Digital Silk Road to the Return of the State, pp.178-210.

Arner, D.W., Animashaun, S., Charamba, K. and Cai, Y., 2024. Building Digital Payments Ecosystems: Digital Financial Infrastructure, Access to Finance, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper, (23/56).  

Arner, D.W., Zetzsche, D.A., Buckley, R.P. and Kirkwood, J.M., 2024. The financialisation of Crypto: Designing an international regulatory consensus. Computer Law & Security Review, 53, p.105970.

 Zetzsche, D.A., Unterstell, M., Buckley, R.P. and Arner, D.W., 2024. Datafication of sustainable finance. 

Zetzsche, D., Buckley, R., Arner, D. and Didenko, A., 2024. Liabilities associated with distributed ledgers: a comparative analysis. In FinTech (pp. 295-317). Edward Elgar Publishing.

 Gibson, E., Gazi, S. and Arner, D.W., 2024. Digital Finance, Financial Inclusion and Gender Equality: Digital Public Goods, Rearchitecting Financial Systems and Economic Empowerment of Women.

 Arner, D., Animashaun, S., Cai, Y. and Charamba, K., 2024. Building digital payment ecosystems: Digital financial infrastructure, financial inclusion, and the UN sustainable development goals. Cal. W. Int'l LJ, 55, p.1.

 Arner, D.W., Buckley, R.P., Zetzsche, D.A. and Didenko, A.N., 2024. Monetary Hegemony: Technological Evolution and the International Monetary System. BU Int'l LJ, 42, p.213.

Gibson, E.C., Gazi, S. and Arner, D.W., 2024. Digital Finance, Financial Inclusion and Gender Equality: Strategies for Economic Empowerment of Women. University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 46(1), p.189.

Wang, C.M. and Arner, D.W., 2024. Bigtechs and the Emergence of New Systemically Important Financial Institutions: Lessons from the Chinese Experience. Emory International Law Review, 39(1), p.23.