The Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), announces the appointment of Samantha Sheen as its Director of AML for Europe. Highly regarded as a commercially astute international financial regulatory, crime and risk management expert, Samantha Sheen has developed a strong reputation for excellence at interpreting and applying regulatory strategies, developing robust organisational and procedural policy architecture and implementing global sanctions compliance.

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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released OTC derivatives statistics at end-December 2015.  Global OTC derivatives markets saw a broad-based decline in activity in the second half of 2015. The notional amount of outstanding contracts fell by 11% between end-June 2015 and end-December 2015, from $552 trillion to $493 trillion. Trade compression to eliminate redundant contracts was a key driver.
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The SEC froze assets of a ski resort steeped in fraudulent EB-5 offerings. They froze the assets of a company based in Vermont for improperly using money collected from an immigration program, hence, committing fraud. The investors’ money was used illegitimately for developing projects of “ski resort facilities and a biomedical research facility”. The amount totalled 350 million dollars.

Equiniti Group plc, a leading provider of technology led solutions to clients with complex and regulated administration needs, recently announced that it has completed the acquisition of KYCnet BV (KYCnet). KYCnet is an experienced Know-Your-Customer (KYC) technology and services provider which helps organisations verify and on-board their customers.

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by Tony de Bree

One of my favourite books on change is this book ‘The Fat Firm’. Why? Because the book mainly uses cartoons to demonstrate the behaviour of employees and managers in large corporates (‘Dinosaurs’ or like in the case of Banking ‘Jurassic banks’). Corporate culture is a hot topic again in large organisations and in management circles. With special attention focus on how managers and employees in large corporates can start to behave like managers and employees in startups. That is why in this column, I will help you in finding the correct ‘levers of change’ for your corporate culture and to transform your organisation from a ‘boss-centric’ one to an organisation with a ‘client-centric’ corporate culture. What is corporate culture?

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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today published a report proposing a series of measures aimed at enhancing the UK’s debt listing regime.  In November 2015, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched an initiative whereby it began a series of meetings with a specially convened group of stakeholders in UK primary debt capital markets, the UK Debt Market Forum (the Forum). The Forum brought together a wide range of experts from the UK-listed primary bond listed debt markets.

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The Financial Conduct Authority has today published a consultation on its proposed rules and guidance for the secondary annuity market. In March 2015 the Government announced that it would extend the pension freedoms to those who had already bought an annuity with the proceeds of their defined contribution pension savings. The government proposes to do this by changing the tax consequences that currently apply to a person wishing to sell their annuity income, with effect from April 2017.  Continue reading…

In a judgment issued today, the Supreme Court confirmed that Asset Land had been operating an unauthorised collective investment scheme (CIS) in the course of operating a land bank which involved the selling of small plots of land to investors at hugely inflated prices. The Supreme Court found that, although investors were the legal owners of their individual plots of land, in reality the arrangements of the scheme were that investors did not have control over their investment and Asset Land was the central operator of the scheme.
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by Evert-Jan Lammers

Nobody wants to be spied upon and then reported to the authorities like it happened during the war. Whistleblowers provoke war traumas even to those who have never experienced war. However, whistleblowers are not war-heroes but peace-heroes. No drama then?
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