Financial Regulatory Forum

By Stuart Gittleman

NEW YORK, May 29 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - U.S. corporate officers and directors are increasingly concerned over the business and legal challenges their entities face from potential securities enforcement and criminal probes, lawyers and corporate officers are saying.

A program last week analyzed how directors, executives and corporate counsel can appropriately manage the business and legal risks of an enforcement proceeding arising from earnings misstatements or employee misconduct at both low and high levels.  (more…)

Jan. 10 (Business Law Currents) — Global regulators have been anything but idle in 2011. Predictably, the U.S. regulatory landscape was dominated by the 800-lb. statutory gorilla, the Dodd-Frank Act. Canada busied itself trying to accommodate Basel III’s coming capital requirements. Anti-bribery regulation managed to elbow its way into UK headlines in spite of a phone hacking scandal and a royal wedding. China cracked down on loopholes for variable interest entities, while Australia’s new tax regime found few friends in the mining sector down under. (more…)

By Helen Parry,   senior regulatory intelligence expert, Complinet. The views expressed are her own.

LONDON, April 5 (Complinet) - Seemingly unnerved at the anti- Bribery Act lobby’s dire predictions of British corporations losing out to competitors hailing from jurisdictions with a more relaxed approach to such matters, the Ministry of Justice appears to have taken heed. This is clearly demonstrated by the reassuring, empathetic and positively emollient tone employed in the revised version of the guidance for companies issued last week, particularly when sensitive issues such as facilitation payments and corporate hospitality are being addressed. This change of heart can be clearly discerned by comparing the original and revised versions of the case study on facilitation payments featured in the guidance documents.

THE ORIGINAL CASE STUDY

The original version posited a UK company engaging with a US counterpart in a consortium which was contracting in a third country jurisdiction “rife with corruption.” They were already in serious trouble, having made facilitation payments, struck a deal with union leaders, replaced the facilitation payments with IT services to educational centres connected to an opposition party and been accused of bribery by an overseas government.

By Rachel Armstrong

SINGAPORE, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Multinational firms trying to get a bigger piece of the Asia growth story face a rising risk of becoming embroiled in corruption scandals unless they enforce stricter compliance norms and new regulations.

The region may have moved centre stage in many companies’ growth strategies as developed economies struggle but firms are also scrutinising investment projects even more and stepping up due diligence before jumping into new joint ventures and M&A. (more…)