By Stuart Gittleman, Compliance Complete
NEW YORK, May 20 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - Corruption, cyber threats and transnational organized crime – and the money laundering that greases the wheels of illicit commerce – are high on the list of law enforcement priorities, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. (more…)
By Bora Yagiz
NEW YORK, July 9 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The “living will” resolution plans submitted to U.S. regulators by nine big banks last week suffer from a number of limitations, including narrow scenarios of financial distress and an assumption that regulators will be coordinated in their approach. But there will be plenty of opportunity to perfect the blueprints.
Five major U.S. banking organizations and four foreign-based bank holding companies with $250 billion or more in total nonbank assets submitted on July 2 their resolution plans, or “living wills,” to the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as required by section 165(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA). This constituted the first of the three waves of submissions of a staggered schedule arranged according to the banks’ sizes and due to be completed by end-2013. These plans to complement the recovery plans that are designed to maintain firms under extreme stress as going concerns, will serve as the official point of entry for bankruptcy. (more…)
By Bora Yagiz
NEW YORK, July 2 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The biggest U.S. banks and foreign banks with U.S. operations will show regulators and the world this week how they are not “too big to fail.”
On Monday U.S. bank holding companies with $250 billion or more in total nonbank assets and foreign-based bank holding companies with $250 billion or more in total U.S. nonbank assets are due to submit resolution plans, known as the “living wills” to the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (more…)
By Stuart Gittleman
NEW YORK, June 12 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – A need to break up big banks is one of the several lessons policy makers should have learned from the financial crisis that have either been ignored or forgotten, according to Phil Angelides, who chaired the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
If the largest banks can only be run so recklessly that they harm the economy as well as themselves, they should be broken up, Angelides said in a talk at the Center for National Policy, an independent Washington D.C. think tank. (more…)
By Emmanuel Olaoye
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – Charges that hundreds of millions of dollars are missing from the accounts of MF Global’s clients raise the question of whether powerful executives at the firm influenced the independence of internal auditors as the futures brokerage scrambled for survival.
MF Global, which collapsed over risky trades on European debt, faces a shortfall of $633 million in customer funds, the CME Group Inc. has estimated. (more…)
By Nick Paraskeva
Nov. 1 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - The collapse of MF Global Holdings is the first major U.S. financial bankruptcy since new Dodd-Frank insolvency laws ended the doctrine of “too big to fail,” as well as being the first U.S. failure attributable to the Euro crisis. While the collapse is expected to be handled under pre-Dodd Frank bankruptcy laws and under the Securities Investor Protection Corp., it may signal that regulators are prepared to take earlier action when they see uncovered financial risks.
The default follows agreement last week by EU heads of state, which required banks to increase capital by 106 billion euros to restore confidence. This is based on a higher capital ratio of 9 percent of highest quality capital, after a buffer for the mark-down of sovereign debt value of periphery EU States to current market values. Banks and private sector creditors to Greece accepted 50 percent voluntary write-down, as part of the package. (more…)
By Susannah Hammond, Thomson Reuters’ regulatory intelligence team. The views expressed are her own
LONDON, May 9 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – The Financial Stability Board, regulatory policy maker of choice for the G20, has started to show its teeth. From its roots as the supranational setter of standards, guidance, policies and principles in the wake of the financial crisis, the FSB has started to clarify how it will monitor compliance with its requirements as well as deal forcefully with breaches.
A progress report on one of its strands of work regarding promoting global adherence to regulatory and supervisory standards on international cooperation and information exchange highlights how the FSB uses the International Monetary Fund as its objective reviewer of compliance with international standards. Critically, it shows how the FSB has taken the first steps in setting out the implications for what are called non-cooperative jurisdictions.
By Peter Elstob
LONDON, April 12 (Complinet) – The Independent Commission on Banking said on Monday that separating retail and wholesale banking in some way might have “a number of potential benefits”, and it invited views on the best design for a “retail ring-fence”.
In an annex to its interim report, the commission illustrated one way to devise such a ring-fence. This is to divide banking business into three broad categories: activities which must take place within the ring-fence; activities which may take place within it; and those which may not take place within it.
But the example leaves a lot of room for interpretation. (more…)
WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved an amendment to a sweeping Wall Street reform bill that would set up a new government protocol for seizing and dismantling large financial firms that are in distress.
Here is a description of the bipartisan plan, in a statement by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Democrat.
By Kevin Drawbaugh
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) – Senator Christopher Dodd, chief negotiator for the Democrats in U.S. Senate talks on financial regulation reform, said on Friday he was uncertain whether bipartisan support for a compromise bill could be achieved.
With one of the Obama administration’s top domestic policy priorities in the balance, Dodd sounded wary but hopeful following weeks of discussions that have snagged on a proposal to create a new financial consumer watchdog.
“While we do not have a bipartisan agreement yet at all, we’re getting there, we’re trying. I don’t know if it will happen or not,” Dodd said in remarks on the Senate floor.
