Authorities must be prepared to act against the invasive spread of cryptocurrencies to protect consumers and investors, Bank for International Settlements (BIS) General Manager Agustín Carstens said. In a lecture “Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?”, Mr Carstens said that for money to keep its value, it must be backed by accountable institutions which enjoy public trust. Here, central banks are key.

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Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, gave a speech about the macroeconomic stabilisation in the euro area. He says that there’s broad agreement that without our unprecedented actions, the euro area would have fared far worse. Even more people would have lost their jobs, and wages and prices would have stagnated for much longer, or would even have fallen. Although our actions were bold and unparalleled, we acted within our mandate, as confirmed by the European Court of Justice.
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Bennink & Amar Advocaten (B&A Law), who set up the first and only Dutch law firm fully specialised in economic sanctions and export controls, has joined forces with the best regulatory and criminal enforcement law firm of the Netherlands, Wladimiroff Advocaten N.V. Wladimiroff is fully responsible for the economic sanctions and export controls practice, under practically the same conditions as B&A Law. This makes it possible to provide even stronger enforcement practice in relation to sanctions and export controls. B&A Law have already successfully worked on several enforcement cases with Wladimiroff. At the same time, B&A Law practice adds a completely new dimension to that of Wladimiroff.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met in December indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising at a solid rate. Gains in employment, household spending, and business fixed investment have been solid, and the unemployment rate has stayed low. On a 12-month basis, both overall inflation and inflation for items other than food and energy have continued to run below 2 percent. Market-based measures of inflation compensation have increased in recent months but remain low; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations are little changed, on balance.

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Victoria Saporta, Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), has announced that the Bank of Russia has become a member of the IAIS’ Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) – an international supervisory cooperation and information exchange agreement. Since the first jurisdiction was admitted in June 2009, membership in the IAIS MMoU has grown significantly to now include 65 signatories representing more than 70 percent of worldwide premium volume.

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Representatives from various sub-Saharan African central banks and supervisory authorities, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the Financial Stability Institute (FSI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) met in Cape Town for a High-level Meeting, hosted by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Continue reading…

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a Discussion Paper on the implementation in the European Union (EU) of the revised market risk and counterparty credit risk frameworks, i.e. the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) and the Standardised Approach for Counterparty Credit Risk (SA-CCR). This paper discusses some of the most important technical and operational challenges to implement the FRTB and SA-CCR in the EU. The paper aims at providing some preliminary views on how these implementation issues could be addressed and, at the same time, seeks early feedback from the stakeholders on the proposals. The paper also puts forward a roadmap for the development of the regulatory deliverables on the FRTB and SA-CCR included in the CRR2 proposal. The consultation runs until 15 March 2018.
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The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) has carried out its work against the backdrop of two significant social-political moments: a growing interest in ethical issues, both in the public and in the private spheres and the im-minent entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018. For some, this may nourish a perception that the work of the EAG represents a challenge to data protection professionals, particularly to lawyers in the field, as well as to companies struggling to adapt their processes and routines to the requirements of the GDPR.

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The experience of the global financial crisis, the post-crisis market environment and changes to regulatory frameworks have had a marked impact on the banking sector globally. The Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS) Working Group examined trends in bank business models, performance and market structure over the past decade, and assessed their implications for the stability and efficiency of banking markets.

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