HSBC victory in Shah claim a relief to bank money-laundering monitors
By Martin Coyle
LONDON/NEW YORK, May 17 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – Counter-money laundering officials have welcomed a London High Court decision that saw wealthy Zimbabwean businessman Jayesh Shah fail in his $300 million claim against HSBC Private Bank. Yesterday’s judgment is a relief to financial businesses who feared the impact of a Shah victory on overhauling their processes for suspicious activity reporting.
The case focused on HSBC’s decision to block four transactions totalling more than $38 million between September 2006 and February 2007. The bank suspected Shah of money laundering and sought consent from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the UK’s financial intelligence unit, to proceed with the transfers. Shah claimed that the delay in carrying out his requests in part led to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe freezing his investments in Zimbabwe and caused him significant losses. SOCA later gave consent to the transactions as legitimate. Shah had ‘parked’ the majority of the money in his HSBC account following an attempted fraud on his Credit Agricole account in July 2006. (more…)
Firms urged to spend more, complain less to meet compliance challenge
By Rachel Wolcott
LONDON/NEW YORK, May 16 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – Talk to any compliance officer these days and the chances are they will tell a story about too many new rules from too many jurisdictions that are too complicated and labour-intensive and expensive to implement. Each time another missive hits their desks from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), or one of the many other global, European Union or U.S. regulators, bankers, their compliance officers or risk managers, wonder quite how they will be able to manage the implementation process and also, perhaps more importantly how much it will all cost.
At the Cass-Capco Institute Paper Series on Risk conference held last month in London, a senior compliance official from a global systemically important financial (G-SIFI) institution said: “We are deluged with regulations that we don’t know will work, then we have to implement them. People are getting lost in a mire of complexity.” (more…)
Time to merge risk management and compliance?
By Rachel Wolcott
LONDON/NEW YORK, April 5 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – Regulators’ rising interest in risk management combined with a long trail of big fines for compliance failures has some consultants and industry leaders wondering whether it is time for the two disciplines to come closer together if not merge completely.
More than ever there are areas of overlap between risk and compliance. Risk management is now hardwired into more rules and regulations since the beginning of the financial crisis. In the UK, for example, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) hasincreased its fines for risk management failures . The U.S.’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also indicated that it intends to take risk management as well as other governance and compliance issues even more seriously than in the past. (more…)
Cole’s FSA departure leaves a lasting legacy but no surprise, says industry
By Martin Coyle
LONDON/NEW YORK, Feb. 16 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - City lawyers have praised Margaret Cole’s legacy following her decision to depart the Financial Services Authority and have said her successor faces a tough job continuing her good work as head of enforcement. Observers also noted that Cole’s failure to secure the top job at the new Financial Conduct Authority meant that her departure was inevitable. Cole, managing director and board member, announced her exit from the regulator yesterday after seven years. Cole, who joined the regulator as director of enforcement in 2005 from U.S. law firm White & Case, is widely credited with pushing forward the FSA’s recent tough approach to combating financial crime and market abuse. The importance of her departure was perhaps reflected as the news was briefly ‘trending’ on Twitter yesterday. (more…)
UK insider trading fine against Einhorn a non-starter in U.S., experts say
By Stuart Gittleman
NEW YORK, Jan. 27 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The circumstances that led to UK trading-abuse penalties against U.S. fund manager Greenlight Capital and its portfolio manager David Einhorn probably would not have led to a similar case in the United States, securities lawyers told Thomson Reuters.
The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) this week fined Greenlight Capital, a U.S. fund manager, and David Einhorn, its portfolio manager, for selling shares after receiving a tip that the issuer was planning an offering that would dilute the fund’s position. (more…)
Einhorn/Greenlight Capital fine highlights duty for investors to seek absolute clarity over inside information
By Martin Coyle and Alex Robson
LONDON/NEW YORK, (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – A decision by the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) to fine hedge fund manager David Einhorn and his Greenlight Capital fund 7.3 million pounds ($11.5 million) has highlighted the need for professional investors to ascertain clearly what constitutes inside information, securities lawyers said. The FSA said that it fined Einhorn 3.64 million pounds and Greenlight Capital 3.65 million pounds for using inside information that he obtained from a broker before selling shares in a UK public company in 2009. Einhorn’s is the biggest scalp by far of the FSA’s renewed determination to punish market manipulation as part of its “credible deterrence” policy.
The regulator said that Einhorn learned from a telephone conversation with the broker that British pub company Punch Taverns was on the verge of a significant equity fundraising, prompting the New York-based financier to sell down his holdings before an anticipated fall in the shares. (more…)
Dead man walking: The FSA’s aggressive stance with financial services firms
LONDON, Sept. 20 (Business Law Currents) – If the death sentence of the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) was to earn a last request then it may well have been to introduce a new era of aggressive enforcement as it prepares to hand over power to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
It may have slept through the worst financial crisis in living memory and be about to be put to death but this seems to have only invigorated the FSA in its enforcement actions, as it introduces increasingly tough measures on financial firms. Dead man walking? Perhaps. But beware of those boots, as the FSA toughens up its enforcement actions. (more…)
This was an eye opener! believe us as a legal service provider for financial frauds or discrepancies we agree with the author that situation created by FSA regulations will inhibit innovation can increase complexity in financial services market.
Get Shorty: Europe’s Crackdown on Short Selling (Westlaw Business)
By Christopher Elias, (Westlaw Business)
Radical changes to Europe’s system of financial regulation are under way and with them a harmonisation of securities rules as Europe turns a corner on the drive to create a single European Securities and Markets Authority with more stringent disclosure requirements. But with not all European regulators striking the same note, the move for greater scrutiny and heightened disclosure expectations over short selling and shareholdings is making sluggish progress forward. (more…)
from Reuters Investigates:
Financial cyber-bullying?
"They love a conspiracy theory on the boards," David Jones, chief market strategist at spread betting firm IG Index told UK correspondents Rosalba O'Brien and Matt Scuffham when they were reporting for "The stock, the web, the CEO and his lawyers" . It's a look at some of the shenanigans around highly speculative resource stocks when they are discussed on message boards like ADVFN and iii. Late-night gossip and personal insults are par for the course: some suspect organised short-sellers may be behind the talk. Given the high volumes of online trading in the UK, we wonder how long it will be before regulator FSA is forced to take a closer look.
Day-trader John Douce is sceptical about the boards' impact on stock prices
UK’s FSA fines Commerzbank
The UK’s Financial Services Authority has fined the London branch of Commerzbank AG £595,000 for failing to provide accurate transaction reports to the FSA. To view the formal notice of the fine, click here.
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