Financial Regulatory Forum

By Brett Wolf, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, June 6 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday said it has chosen a former New York County prosecutor who is known for his innovative pursuit of criminals to police HSBC’s efforts to clean up its anti-money laundering program.

The Department’s decision to announce its choice at a time when a federal judge’s hesitation to sign-off on its settlement with HSBC has raised questions over the settlement’s prospects suggests the move is an attempt to win the judge’s approval, compliance experts said. (more…)

By Brett Wolf, Compliance Complete

May 14, (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Although a federal judge in Brooklyn has not yet signed-off on a deal between HSBC and the Justice Department that would settle allegations that anti-money laundering failures at the bank allowed drug cartels to launder hundreds of millions of dollars, candidates for a lucrative job policing the bank’s compliance with the pact are scrambling to win the work. (more…)

By Daniel Seleanu, Compliance Complete

TORONTO, April 5 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – In a landmark settlement, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has fined and permanently banned Bernard Boily for falsifying scientific research used in press releases by Bear Lake Gold Ltd., a mining exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. When Bear Lake Gold announced that its research had been tampered with, it suffered a one-day market capitalisation loss of $42 million.

The Boily case is the first to come before the OSC that pertains to the conduct of a qualified person, a position defined as a gatekeeper of technical information under National Instrument 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (PDF) (NI 43-101). (more…)

By Margaret Paradis, Thomson Reuters Accelus Contributor

NEW YORK, March 15 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The pace of social media usage by the U.S. financial industry has begun to rapidly accelerate. One drag on broader and deeper usage, especially by banks, continues to be uncertainty about regulatory compliance standards. Not all segments of the industry have been moving at the same pace. The broker-dealers and insurance companies have forged ahead in this area, relying on issued regulatory guidance. Additionally, asset management is catching up with the benefit of regulatory guidance issued early in 2012. Banking organizations, however, have been acting without specific guidance in this area, creating an extra risk.

In January 2013, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) addressed this risk by proposing specific guidance for the use of social media by federally supervised banks, and certain nonbank entities (collectively, banks), called Social Media: Consumer Risk Management Guidance (PDF).  (more…)

By Stuart Gittleman, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, March 14 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Companies that want to manage their legal and regulatory liability and their reputational capital should treat current standards as the starting point – not the finish line – for their ethics and compliance programs, conference attendees heard Tuesday.

“Your company will be judged in the future by what it does today. Transparency is rapidly increasing, and you don’t know how it will affect your business and reputation,” one of the speakers, Dirk Mohrmann, chief executive officer of World Compliance, told attendees at the 2013 Global Ethics Summit, which was held in New York and was sponsored by Ethisphere and Thomson Reuters. (more…)

By Stuart Gittleman, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, Feb.13 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - ”I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics,” a business executive told a young Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 movie The Graduate.

Today’s one word of advice to a young lawyer could easily be “compliance,” Brooklyn Law School Dean Nick Allard said Friday in opening a symposium on “The growth and importance of compliance in financial firms: meaning and implications.” (more…)

By Bora Yagiz, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, Feb. 13 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The guidelines on social media proposed by bank regulators comprising the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) in January are intended as a basic tool to help financial institutions identify potential trouble areas and address them as part of an overall risk management program.

The council identified potential risks for financial institutions in the areas including deposit insurance, debt collection practices, use of payments systems, equal access for credit, and bank-secrecy anti-money laundering processes.  (more…)

By Stuart Gittleman, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, Dec. 13 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The “shifting sands” of regulation, especially since the onset of the financial crisis, are making it more challenging for U.S. public companies to conduct global operations, the top lawyers for three such companies said Friday.

The general counsels – Andrew Bonzani of Interpublic Group, Peter J. Ganz of Ashland Inc. and Elizabeth M. Sacksteder of Citigroup – spoke at the Institute for Corporate Counsel, which was cosponsored by Thomson Reuters and the New York City Bar Association. (more…)

By Stuart Gittleman, Compliance Complete

NEW YORK, Dec. 10 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – Preventing fraud, not just reacting once it occurs, should be the goal of every corporate compliance program, but business has a mixed record in encouraging employees to report suspected misconduct internally, speakers at a Thomson Reuters forum said Tuesday.

Preventing fraud and encouraging internal reporting has also been mandatory for public companies since 2002. Among other things, Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires issuers’ audit committees to establish procedures for employees to confidentially and anonymously submit concerns over questionable accounting or auditing matters. And Section 806 of Sarbanes-Oxley generally prohibits issuers from retaliating against employees for raising these concerns. (more…)

By Stuart Gittleman

NEW YORK, July 31 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Compliance officers have a duty to become whistleblowers if their concerns are not heeded internally, Neil Barofsky, the watchdog over the U.S. financial crisis bailout program, told Compliance Complete in an interview.

Exposing wrongdoing is the only way to eradicate a “cancer” of fraud that can endanger companies and the larger economy, said Barfosky, who also in the interview warned on dangers of a revolving door between financial regulators and Wall Street.

Barofsky was appointed Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the aftermath of the September 2008 financial crash by President George W. Bush and served from mid-December through March 2011, when he left to teach at New York University School of Law.