Yesha Yadav

Associate Dean and Robert Belton Director of Diversity, Equity and Community
Milton R. Underwood Chair
Professor of Law
Faculty Co-director, LL.M. Program

Yesha Yadav's research interests lie in financial market regulation, securities regulation and corporate bankruptcy, focusing on market structure, exchange design, payments, digital asset regulation, distressed debt and restructuring. She has developed particular specialization in market microstructure, examining the regulation of trading ecosystems for various asset classes, notably, equity, U.S. Treasuries, corporate bonds and cryptocurrencies. 

Before joining Vanderbilt's Law faculty in 2011, Professor Yadav worked as a legal counsel with the World Bank in its finance, private-sector development and infrastructure unit, where she specialized in financial regulation and insolvency, and creditor-debtor rights. Before joining the World Bank in 2009, she practiced from 2004-08 in the London and Paris offices of Clifford Chance in the firm's financial regulation and derivatives group. As part of her work in the area of payments regulation, she advised the European Payments Council on the establishment of the Single Euro Payments Area.

Since joining Vanderbilt, Professor Yadav has served as honorary advisor to India’s Financial Services Law Reform Commission and on the Atlantic Council’s Task Force on Divergence, Transatlantic Financial Reform and G-20 Agenda. She has served as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee, where she sat on the Distributed Ledger Technology and Algorithmic Trading Subcommittees. Professor Yadav is also a member of Nasdaq’s Hearing Panel, and the current Vice-Chair of the Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 

Professor Yadav earned an M.A. in Law and Modern Languages (First Class) at the University of Cambridge, after which she earned an LL.M. at Harvard Law School. She was a Vanderbilt University Chancellor Faculty Fellow for 2019-21. In 2022, she won Vanderbilt University’s Chancellor Research Award for her research into U.S. Treasury market regulation. She was honored in 2020 as a second-time winner of the student-selected Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award for excellence in teaching.

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RECENT MEDIA

• Aris Folley, What Would a Debt Ceiling Failure Mean for Americans, The Hill, May 3, 2023.

• Kate Duguid, US Treasuries Rollercoaster Ride Strains Bond Market Functioning, Financial Times, March 17, 2023.

• Yesha Yadav (opinion), Regulators Need a Plan for the Cryptocurrency Industry, Boston Globe, March 16, 2023.

• Pranshu Verma & Jacob Bogage, Signature Bank’s Collapse Spells Trouble for the Cryptocurrency Industry, Washington Post, March 13, 2023.

• Daniel Marans, How Sam Bankman-Fried’s Top Advisers Shaped State and Local Politics, Huff Post, Jan. 20, 2023.  

• Alex Kirshner, What If Sam Bankman-Fried’s Refusal to Shut Up Is A Good Idea, Slate, Jan. 20, 2023.

• Brian Contreras, Have Celebs Learnt Their Lesson From The FTX Debacle, LA Times, Jan. 18, 2023.

• Abha Bhattarai, Crypto is Back – in Davos at Least – As Redemption Tour Rolls On, Washington Post, Jan. 18, 2023.  

• Jonathan Stempel, New York Sues Celsius Network Founder Mashinsky, Alleges Crypto Fraud, Reuters, Jan. 6, 2023.

• Anushree Dave, Crypto Regulation: 2 Big Questions Loom in 2023 After A Chaotic Year for Digital Assets, Market Watch, Dec. 31, 2022.

• Kate Duguid, Colby Smith & Joshua Franklin, Wall Street Wants Capital Rules Eased to Unblock $22 Trillion US Treasury Market, Financial Times, Dec. 29, 2022.  

• Allyson Versprille & Lydia Beyoud, From Crypto-to-ESG, These Are US Regulators Top Priorities in 2023, Bloomberg, Dec. 27, 2022.

• Erin Mansfield & Donovan Slack, Sam Bankman-Fried’s Political Donations Totaled Millions. FTX Could Sue To Recover Them, USA Today, Dec. 16, 2022.

• Allison Morrow, Parents of Sam Bankman-Fried Face Scrutiny Over Their Roles in FTX, CNN, Dec. 14, 2022.

• Ken Sweet & Fatima Hussein, FTX Founder Charged in Scheme to Defraud Crypto Investors, Associated Press, Dec. 13, 2022.

• Erin Mansfield & Bailey Schulz, FTX Founder, Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested in Bahamas, Indicted in New York, USA Today, Dec. 12, 2022.

• Tom Hals & Dietrich Knauth, U.S. Court Weighs Novel Issue of Crypto Ownership in Bankruptcy, Reuters, Dec. 7, 2022.

• Leo Schwartz, The Bahamas Pulled Out All the Stops To Be A Global Crypto Hub: The FTX Collapse Could End That Dream, Fortune, Nov. 18, 2022.

• Elizabeth Lopatto, Sam Bankman-Fried Oversaw FTX’s Meltdown, and the Fallout is Reaching DC, The Verge, Nov. 15, 2022.

• Kate Duguid & Tommy Stubbington, The Cracks in the U.S. Treasury Bond Market, Financial Times, Nov. 14, 2022.

• Leo Schwartz, Binance Says ‘Proof of Reserves’ Can Restore Trust in the Crypto Industry. What Does that Mean?, Fortune, Nov. 14, 2022.

• Julian Mark, Why the FTX Collapse Has Plunged the Crypto World into Upheaval, Washington Post, Nov. 11, 2022.

• Toby Newmyer & Steve Zeitchik, Crypto Chaos Continues as Binance Drops Bid to Buy Rival FTX, Washington Post, Nov. 10, 2022.

Selected TV, Radio and Podcasts

• CNBC Crypto World, CNBC Crypto World, Vanderbilt Law School Professor Breaks Down New Research on Stablecoins and CBDCs, May. 12, 2023. 
  
  
• CNBC Crypto World, Yesha Yadav of Vanderbilt Law School Discusses Her Testimony on Capitol Hill and Digital Asset Regulation, Feb. 24, 2023.

• Macro Hive with Bilal Hafeez, Yesha Yadav on the Galactic Risks of the U.S. Treasury Market, Jan. 13, 2023.

• American Constitution Society, What the Crypto? Dec. 6, 2022.

• Reuters Twitter Spaces (with Jared Elias and Dietrich Knauth), FTX In Flames As Crypto Companies Crash: What’s Next? Reuters Legal, Dec. 9, 2022.

• The Weeds, It’s Time to Regulate Crypto, Nov. 22, 2022.

• CNBC, Gauging Sam Bankman-Fried’s Fraud Liability with Vanderbilt’s Yesha Yadav, Nov. 14, 2022.

• CNBC Asia, Public Interviews Have Given Sam Bankman-Fried An Opportunity to Set-Up A Defense, Says Professor, Dec. 9. 2022.

• CNN International, Newshour with Rosemary Church, December 2022.

• Multiple appearance on Australian National Radio.

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Representative Publications

• "The Failed Regulation of U.S. Treasury Markets," 121 Columbia Law Review 1173 (2021). Selected for the Best Corporate and Securities Articles of 2021 by Corporate Practice Commentator.
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Oversight Failure in Securities Markets," 104 Cornell Law Review 1799 (2019)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Too Big to Fail Shareholders," 103 Minnesota Law Review 587 (2019)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Fintech and the Innovation Trilemma," 107 Georgetown Law Journal 235 (2019) (with Chris Brummer) Selected for reprinting in the Corporate Practice Commentator.
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Insider Trading and Market Structure," 63 UCLA Law Review 968 (2016)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "How Algorithmic Trading Undermines Efficiency in Capital Markets," 68 Vanderbilt Law Review 1607 (2015) (First Prize Winner, George Washington University/C-Leaf Junior Faculty Workshop, 2015) (earlier draft noted in the Economist and Bloomberg) (cited by the D.C. Circuit in Coburn v. Evercore and by the Sixth Circuit in Paul Saumer v. Cliffs Natural Resources Inc.</i>)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "The Failure of Liability in Modern Markets," 102 Virginia Law Review 1031 (2016)
  Full Text | SSRN
• "Insider Trading in Derivatives Markets," 103 Georgetown Law Journal 381 (2015) (noted in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg) (chosen by the Corporate Practice Commentator as a top 10 article in securities and corporate law in 2014)
  Full Text | PDF
• "The Case for a Market in Debt Governance," 67 Vanderbilt Law Review 771 (2014)
  Full Text | WWW
• "The Problematic Case of Clearinghouses in Complex Markets," 101 Georgetown Law Journal 387 (2013) (cited by Justice Thomas in the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International)
  Full Text | SSRN | HEIN

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