The Federal Reserve Board requested comment on proposed guidance that would clarify the Board’s supervisory expectations related to risk management for large financial institutions. The guidance is part of a broader initiative to develop a new rating system for large financial institutions that will align with the post-crisis supervisory program.
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCTA) has imposed a financial penalty of £250,000 on former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) interest rate derivatives trader, Neil Danziger, and prohibited him from performing any function in relation to any regulated financial activity. Mr Danziger formerly worked at RBS trading products referenced to Japanese Yen (JPY) LIBOR. In addition, on occasion, he made RBS’s JPY LIBOR submissions to the British Bankers Association (BBA) when RBS’s primary submitters were not available.
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HM Treasury has announced the appointment of Charles Randell CBE as the new Chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Charles is currently an external member of the Prudential Regulation Committee of the Bank of England and a non-executive board member of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Charles will take up the role on 1 April 2018. The appointment is for a five year term.
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The Committee’s Basel III reforms complement the initial phase of the Basel III reforms announced in 2010. The 2017 reforms seek to restore credibility in the calculation of riskweighted assets (RWAs) and improve the comparability of banks’ capital ratios. RWAs are an estimate of risk that determines the minimum level of regulatory capital a bank must maintain to deal with unexpected losses. A prudent and credible calculation of RWAs is an integral element of the risk-based capital framework.
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More than $500 million has been recouped by tax authorities worldwide after the Panama Papers revelations, first published in April 2016.Spain alone collected $122 million after an investigation into the affairs of tax residents who had stockpiled money offshore. Among the countries represented in the Panama Papers data, a total of 15 – on three continents – have publicly commented on the amount of taxes recovered by tax authorities.
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The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to develop a daily euro unsecured overnight interest rate based on data already available to the Eurosystem. The rate, which will be finalised before 2020, will complement existing benchmark rates produced by the private sector and will serve as a backstop reference rate. It will be based entirely on transactions in euro that are reported by banks in accordance with the ECB’s money market statistical reporting (MMSR).
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Rabobank, National Association (“RNA”), a California-based subsidiary of Coöperatieve Rabobank, U.A. (“Rabobank”), has taken a Q4 2017 provision of approximately EUR 310 million in anticipation of a settlement connected to previously disclosed investigations. RNA has been under investigation since 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice and other U.S. authorities for possible violations of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations and statutes in relation to its historical AML compliance program, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (“OCC”) examination of that program in the past.  Continue reading…

Ad the very end of 2017 Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, gave an interview on the economical position of Europe, and what the tax reforms in the US means for Europe, on the interaction of Centrale banks’ interaction with markets and about the relationship with China, how it will be strenghtened in .
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Growth in the number of credit card payments rose sharply from 2015 to 2016–eclipsing growth for other card types, according to new payments data collected by the Federal Reserve. A notable increase was also seen last year in the number of card payments made remotely versus in person. The number of credit card payments grew 10.2 percent in 2016 to 37.3 billion with a total value of $3.27 trillion. The increase in the number of payments compares with an 8.1 percent annual rate from 2012 to 2015 and was boosted by continued strong growth in the number of payments made remotely.
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