Do the SEC and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) need to tighten up anti-money-laundering (AML) and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (CFT) requirements? You don’t need to know the lyrics to “Tighten Up,” by Houston’s Archie Bell & the Drells, to puzzle out the answer. It does. The SEC’s Division of Examinations (a.k.a. EXAMS) oversees broker-dealers and… Read More >>
Citi & FINOS Push for ‘Common Cloud Controls’
Financial services giant Citi and the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) are launching an open standard project that will formulate “consistent controls” for cloud computing cybersecurity, resiliency, and compliance that cloud service providers (CSPs) can use as the basis for a common set of services. The “Common Cloud Controls (CCC)” push is intended to bring… Read More >>
UBS Fined $387M for Credit Suisse’s Archegos Chapter
UBS Group is paying $387 million in fines to the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the U.K.’s Prudential Regulation Authority and finalizing proceedings with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) — in an effort to close the Archegos Capital Management chapter in the history of Credit Suisse, now a subsidiary of its former Swiss… Read More >>
DTCC & CME Push to Expand Treasuries Deal & Other News
DTCC, CME Need Regulators to Allow Cross-Margining Expansion Post-trade infrastructure system and services provider DTCC and derivatives exchanges company CME Group report that they would like to improve their cross-margining arrangement so that clearing members of CME and the Government Securities Division of DTCC’s Fixed Income Clearing Corp. (FICC) can trade and clear U.S. Treasury… Read More >>
Deutsche Bank Fined $186M for Money Laundering Woes
Deutsche Bank AG, its New York branch, and other U.S. affiliates have been fined $186 million by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System because the German banking giant moved too slowly to resolve allegedly inadequate sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering (AML) controls, officials say. The Fed’s fine, consent order, and written agreement… Read More >>
Can APIs Ease Prime Brokerage Friction?
(Prerak Sanghvi and his New York City-based employer Clear Street, which describes itself as “an independent, non-bank prime broker” are on a mission. They want to help the capital markets industry move beyond mainframe-based, legacy infrastructures and onto Clear Street’s cloud-native clearing and custody system. Getting there will require application programming interfaces (APIs), which are links… Read More >>
SEC Revamps Rules for Money Market Fund Liquidity
The SEC is changing key rules governing how money market funds are handled during times of market stress and is imposing increases in minimum liquidity requirements to “provide a more substantial buffer” amid rapid redemptions, according to the regulator. However, as the 3-2 vote of the commissioners reflects there is controversy over these amendments of… Read More >>
Merrill Lynch Pays $12M to Resolve SAR Charges
Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. and its parent company BAC North America Holding Co. (BACNAH) have settled with the SEC and FINRA over charges that the broker-dealer failed to file approximately 1,500 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from 2009 to late 2019, resulting in penalties and fines totaling $12 million. The SAR shortcomings came… Read More >>
Aladdin Links to LTX’s Liquidity Cloud & Other News
Aladdin & LTX Users Get Cross-Platform Access BlackRock’s Aladdin platform has a new channel to liquidity via its integration with the Liquidity Cloud offering from LTX, a subsidiary of Broadridge Financial Solutions, and the link helps common clients of LTX and Aladdin to access trading functions of both platforms, officials report. LTX is a… Read More >>
Marcum Settles Alleged SPAC Audit Failures for $13M
If you’re a firm that specializes in auditing other firms, shouldn’t your first duty be to ensure that your audits are accurate? Or should your first duty be to ensure your own growth? The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has the obvious answer. The SEC has charged Marcum LLP, the audit firm in question,… Read More >>
