The U.K. Accelerated Settlement Taskforce (AST) has officially kicked off the transition to a T+1 settlement cycle, with backing from the U.K. government, the Bank of England, and the U.K. regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The switch is set for October 11, 2027, marking a major operational shift for UK financial services firms. AST… Read More >>
CFTC Taps BNY Mellon & Franklin Templeton & Other News
Officials from Key Firms Join Digital Assets Subcommittee The CFTC recently announced that its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee will have co-chairs from BNY Mellon and Franklin Templeton. Caroline Butler, global head of digital assets at BNY Mellon, and Sandy Kaul, senior vice president, head of digital and industry advisory services at Franklin Templeton, will serve… Read More >>
FCA Targets False ESG Labels
Picture it, teatime at London’s Financial Adventurers Club. “I say, chaps,” says one disreputable fellow, “did you see what the Yanks have come up with? ‘Green investing’! ‘Sustainable’! Must be some way to pocket a few shillings peddling that to the punters.” That’s greenwashing, and you can add it to your list of financial scams…. Read More >>
FCA Fines Citi Brokerage $15M for Surveillance Woes
A U.K. regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has imposed a fine of $14.8 million (£12,553,800) upon Citigroup’s international broker-dealer subsidiary for breaches of the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), a law that requires firms to monitor orders and trades to detect potential market manipulation. The FCA charged the London-based Citigroup Global Markets Ltd. (CGML) with… Read More >>
NatWest Bank Fined $352M via Money Laundering Case
U.K. financial institution National Westminster Bank has been fined £264.8 million ($352.7 million) after being convicted for breaches of money laundering regulation in a criminal case led by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a key financial services regulator. The fine follows a guilty plea filed by NatWest officials in early October via Westminster Magistrates Court… Read More >>
Credit Suisse Reaches $475M Settlement of Bond Scandal
Mozambique may seem far from Wall Street, but of course it’s not. Not in this interconnected world. And that means that a bond scandal in far-away Mozambique has attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice, and the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority. The SEC, the DoJ, and… Read More >>
Commerzbank Fined $47M via AML Controls Case
A U.K. regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has fined the London branch of Commerzbank AG $47.5 million for allegedly using inadequate anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls from October 2012 to September 2017. A representative of the international bank based in Frankfurt, German, tells FTF News that the FCA investigation uncovered “no actual financial… Read More >>
MiFID II Dawns Amid Panic & Yawns
MiFID II came in with a whimper on January 3, 2018 instead of a bang thanks to the painstaking groundwork laid by banks and brokers. However, not everyone was as prepared as they should have been. According to a new report by voice recording specialists Red Box Recorders, 73 percent of IT Data Management (ITDM)… Read More >>
Merrill Lynch Fined $45M for Derivatives Reporting Failures
The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Bank of America — Merrill Lynch (BAML) £34.5 million ($45.7 million) for failing to report derivatives transactions between 2014 and 2016. The enforcement action — which relates to 68.5 million exchange traded derivative transactions — is the first of its kind against a firm for failing to… Read More >>
Some Firms Still Favor Manual Client Reporting: Survey
SS&C Survey Focuses on Client Reporting Investor clients are demanding more data from financial services firms but many firms are still relying on manual processes to pull together reports, according to a report sponsored by SS&C Technologies, a financial services software and services vendor. The survey results uncovered that while 100 percent of respondents say… Read More >>
