Financial Regulatory Forum

By Emmanuel Olaoye

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, July 10 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - A major theme in the Barclays scandal over rate-rigging is the firm’s failure to conduct adequate monitoring and testing of its compliance program, governance experts have told Thomson Reuters Accelus.

Barclays has agreed to pay $453 million to settle charges by U.S. and UK authorities that its employees manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, a key benchmark for global financial transactions, including payments on mortgages, credit cards and other financial contracts.  (more…)

By Emmanuel Olaoye

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, July 3 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - A U.S. regulator’s case against Barclays revealed significant failures with the bank’s internal controls as well as failures with its corporate governance.

Barclays agreed last week to pay $453 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations that it rigged key interbank lending rates, called the London Inter-bank Offering Rate (Libor) and a separate Euribor rate, by manipulating its reported rates in submissions to the British Bankers Association, which calculated the benchmark figures. (more…)

By Nick Paraskeva

NEW YORK, March 14 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants more power to fine firms and individuals for fraud and market abuses, in the face of tougher public scrutiny and judicial opposition to recent settlements. While the agency has been imposing stiffer penalties, the amount remains constrained by the agency’s current authority, said George Canellos SEC New York Regional Office Director.

Canellos was speaking as part of a panel last week on trends in financial enforcement and securities litigation after Dodd-Frank. The panel was organized by NYU Stern Business School and NERA Economic Consulting. (more…)

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…)

By Helen Parry, the views expressed are her own.

LONDON, Oct. 7 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - There are many common features in cases of rogue or unauthorised trading, including the use by ostensibly riskless arbitrage traders of fictitious trades on internal systems to mask their unhedged positions. One obvious feature that is present in many rogue trader cases has been a failure in trade confirmation systems and controls. This feature frequently appears conterminously with the fact that a trader has intimate knowledge of and/or power and influence over middle and back office systems. (more…)

LONDON, June 2 (Reuters) – The Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) decision to fine a London coffee broker 100,000 pounds ($146,400) and ban him from working in the financial services industry marks a significant toughening in the market abuse regime for commodities.

The banning order on Andrew Kerr marks the first successful action for market abuse in commodity markets. Kerr is accused of helping a client execute large orders during a period in which reference prices were set based on a volume-weighted average. It was a deliberate move to influence market prices in the run up to an option expiry.

While Kerr’s behaviour was unusually blatant, and unfortunately for him captured on tape in unguarded language, using large volume trades to support or batter market prices close to daily or option settlements is common practice across commodity markets.