Financial Regulatory Forum

By Christopher Elias (UK)

LONDON, July 5 (Business Law Currents) – The English courts recently decided that an exclusive jurisdiction clause between Citigroup’s English subsidiary and two corporate vehicles of family trusts belonging to a Saudi Arabian family did not prohibit the Saudi investors from bringing FINRA arbitration proceedings against Citigroup’s U.S. arm.

In Citigroup Global Markets Ltd v Amatra Leveraged Feeder Holdings Ltd, the court was tasked with deciding whether FINRA’s regulatory regime or an English exclusive jurisdiction clause should prevail. The court concluded that Citigroup’s U.S. subsidiary should not be prevented from facing proceedings in the U.S. as the benefit of the exclusive jurisdiction clause applied solely to Citigroup’s English subsidiary. (more…)

By Ajay Shamdasani

HONG KONG/NEW YORK, Sept. 15 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – The Hong Kong securities regulator’s legal troubles in bringing disciplinary action against New York-based hedge fund Tiger Asia Management has shown the limitations of its regulatory reach and signalled that funds may be safer operating from offshore, according to a source close to the proceedings. The source, a senior local financial lawyer close to the case, said that his advice for foreign funds that did not need to be licensed and regulated in Hong Kong was to forgo doing so in order to reduce the risk of disciplinary action by the territory’s Securities and Futures Commission.

The SFC is locked in a legal battle over its disciplinary action against Tiger Asia and three of its officers — Bill Sung Kook Hwang, Raymond Park and William Tomita — first taken in August 2009. The SFC alleged the hedge fund and its senior management breached local market misconduct and insider dealing rules during a placing of China Construction Bank shares in Hong Kong in early 2009, earning itself a profit of $29.9 million.  (more…)