The European Court of Auditors (ECA) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that establishes practical information-sharing arrangements between the two institutions. These arrangements will allow the ECA to seek and obtain all the documents and information that it needs to audit ECB Banking Supervision. Highly confidential documentation will be fully protected, and access to sensitive bank-specific information will be granted in a controlled environment on-site at the ECB.

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UK nationals living in the EU, who may struggle to complete the necessary residency applications, will be helped by measures. The Government is providing up to £3 million in grant funding for charities and other voluntary organisations who will inform UK nationals about the need to register or apply for residency and support them as they complete their applications.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Pennsylvania investment adviser with operating an investment advisory fraud involving over $100 million in investments. The SEC also obtained an emergency asset freeze. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Brenda Smith, and her fund Broad Reach Capital, LP, raised approximately $105 million from approximately 40 investors by representing that she would invest their money in publicly traded securities through various trading strategies that she championed as providing consistent high returns.

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Claims management companies (CMCs) must do more to ensure their promotions do not mislead potential customers according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Since the FCA took over regulation of CMCs on 1 April 2019 it has reviewed over 200 CMC adverts in various media and found widespread poor-practice in CMCs.
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The European Commissioner for Digital Economy Mariya Gabriel announces an ambitious target to increase EU competitiveness in AI and try to catch up with the China and US in terms of investment. She proposed an investment objective of € 20 billion annually for the period 2021-2027, using the new EU funding programmes Horizon Europe and Digital Europe.
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The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to revise its supervisory expectations for prudential provisioning of new non-performing exposures (NPEs) specified in the “Addendum to the ECB Guidance to banks on non-performing loans” (hereafter the “Addendum”). The decision was made after taking into account the adoption of a new EU regulation that outlines the Pillar 1 treatment for NPEs. The new regulation, which entered into force on 26 April 2019, complements existing prudential rules and requires a deduction from own funds when NPEs are not sufficiently covered by provisions or other adjustments.
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by Giacomo Luca Aleo

On June 18, 2019 Facebook announced the birth of its own cryptocurrency: Libra, whose name is inspired by Roman unit of measurement, deriving from balance Latin name; the debut is expected for the first half of 2020. The announcement caused, on one hand, a general uproar and, on the other, the value increase of the other cryptocurrencies. The “Libra Association” (no-profit organization) will manage Libra. It currently counts 28 heterogeneous founding partners (with the goal of reaching 100), representing business giants: from Mastercard and Visa to operators of payment system (PayPal, PayU, Stripe), from telecommunications operators (Vodafone and Iliad) to consumer companies (including Booking, eBay, Spotify, Uber), from venture capital such as Andreessen Horowitz to a global exchange Coinbase. Managing Libra actually means manage the Libra Blockchain: it is a permissioned ledgers model, i.e. the management and the validation of transactions is prerogative of a single node, which – in this case – is collective and represented by the Libra Association. The blockchain will record the entire history of the transactions by replicating them in the node; therefore, the transactions will be transparent to all participants of the Libra Association.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged New York-based broker-dealer AOC Securities LLC, and its former chief executive officer, Ronaldo Gonzalez, with failing to supervise an AOC broker who provided inflated price quotes for certain securities to a significant customer of AOC. According to the SEC’s orders, Frank Dinucci Jr., a broker at AOC, provided inflated price quotes to a New York-based investment adviser, Premium Point Investments LP. 

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