Financial Regulatory Forum

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 Nick Paraskeva, Compliance Complete contributor

NEW YORK, Dec. 21 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The UBS felony fraud plea for manipulating reporting of the Libor interbank lending rate marks a regulatory turning point towards tougher enforcement. After the U.S. election confirmed Dodd-Frank is here to stay, and with most Group of 20 reforms mapped out, rulemaking will proceed at a slower pace. The shift will impact the financial-industry, both in the U.S. and globally, which will face a greater supervisory willingness to impose high penalties, and a focus on ethical compliance.

“Today’s announcement – and $1.5 billion global resolution – underscores the Justice Department’s firm commitment to investigating and prosecuting such conduct, and to holding perpetrators of these crimes accountable for their actions,” said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in announcing the deal this week. His involvement in the enforcement was notable, as previous announcements have been made by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. (more…)

By Brett Wolf

NEW YORK, Nov. 13 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Securities industry regulators are beginning to ask U.S. broker-dealers tough questions about how they are mitigating money laundering and sanctions risks associated with their involvement in a 2-year-old currency exchange system run by the Venezuelan government, sources familiar with the issue said.

“There are a lot of questions being asked by regulators and compliance officers,” said Sven Stumbauer, managing director of Veris Consulting Inc’s Miami office. “And some broker-dealers, especially small introducing brokers, cannot answer them.” (more…)

By Emmanuel Olaoye

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Nov. 6 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Financial institutions should take advantage of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s decision to postpone key start dates in the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and not wait for the U.S. Treasury to issue its final rules before they start their preparations, experts told Compliance Complete.

“If you put off your efforts or suspend them for too long I think you’ll fall way too far behind. I think you’ll have a very difficult time doing what you have to do. At this point you should have a very clear idea of what your current systems and procedures can and can’t do and how they are going to have to be modified,” said John Staples, managing partner of the law firm Burt, Staples & Maner, LLP. (more…)

By Emmanuel Olaoye

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The U.S. Treasury Department will move ahead after the Nov. 6 U.S. national elections to issue its plan for exempting foreign exchange swaps, a banking industry source said. A senior government official said a decision on the issue was expected by year end, after international standards setters complete work on derivatives margin requirements.

The Treasury plan, which was proposed in April 2011, would exempt instruments such as foreign exchange swaps and forward contracts from new rules affecting dealers in the $650 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.  (more…)

By Christopher Elias

LONDON, Aug. 31, (Business Law Currents) - A series of stock market glitches has prompted regulators around the world to introduce new regulations to limit the impact of computer malfunctions on trading. Shielding markets from another Knight Capital disaster, the new rules seek to defend market participants from malicious machines and risky robots. (more…)

By Justin O’Brien, Thomson Reuters Accelus contributing author

LONDON/NEW YORK, Aug. 31 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Despite the lack of commentary from either the White House or federal executive agencies, the Standard Chartered investigation — and the manner in which it was handled — is certain to reignite the festering feud over how to regulate finance. Absent the physical bloodshed, the power struggle for control of banking regulation and how to change its culture finds remarkable parallels in Macbeth, the classic Shakespearean tale of political infighting. As with Banquo’s Ghost, the spectre of Eliot Spitzer and his battles with federal counterparts over the purpose of regulation looms large.  (more…)

By Peter Elstob

LONDON/NEW YORK, March 5 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Regulators and market participants continue to differ fundamentally over when a credit default swap should be deemed to be uncovered, or ‘naked’, and when investors are using CDS as a legitimate hedge. If a sovereign CDS can be demonstrated to be hedging counterparty or systemic risk, it can be exempted from the provisions of the proposed European short-selling regulation, which is aimed at abusive use of sovereign CDS by financial institutions to bet against countries’ debt.

Trade bodies argue that regulators should recognize various forms of ‘proxy’ hedging, including buying CDS for the debt of countries other than the one where the institution’s exposure lies — so-called ‘cross-border’ hedging’ — and ‘tail-risk’ hedges that may or may not turn out to have been necessary over a given period. They believe that the short-selling regulation (level 1) does not ban these strategies, and they should therefore be permitted (and so qualify for exemptions) in the detailed rules (level 2) that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is still drawing up. (more…)

By Brett Wolf

NEW YORK, Feb. 23 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The U.S. Justice Department has suffered a string of setbacks in its efforts to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, including two this week, but it retains sufficient leverage to persuade companies to settle bribery allegations without a legal fight, sources said.

“I think companies should be emboldened, but I doubt they will,” said Mike Koehler, an assistant professor of business law at Butler University. “After all, to challenge the Justice Department and to put it to its burden of proof requires a company to be criminally indicted.” Indictment would not only open up a long legal battle, it would also threaten a company’s reputation.  (more…)