The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has elected three new members to its Management Board to replace outgoing members whose term expires in November this year. The election took place at the Board of Supervisors meeting in Luxembourg on 5 November and the successful candidates, who will serve a term of 2½ years beginning on 1 December 2015, are :

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The European Central Bank (ECB) has today published the list of 39 euro area banks that will participate in the 2016 EU-wide stress test conducted by the European Banking Authority (EBA). The EBA will coordinate the exercise in cooperation with national authorities and the ECB. The overall exercise will examine a total of 53 banks across the EU. It will help the public and other stakeholders to compare and assess the resilience of the banks, notably their ability to absorb shocks and meet capital requirements under adverse macroeconomic conditions.

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ECB Banking Supervision conducted a comprehensive assessment of the four significant Greek banks (Alpha Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank) in line with the decision by the Euro Summit on 12 July 2015 and the Memorandum of Understanding between the European Commission, acting on behalf of the European Stability Mechanism, the Hellenic Republic and the Bank of Greece, signed on 19 August 2015.

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The global financial crisis and the aftermath that continues to unfold have created a justifiable obsession with stress among bankers and supervisors: how to prepare for it, guard against it and respond when it flares up by understanding the various sources of risk to which each institution is exposed and how the exposures interact with one another. The sharper focus has made stress testing a key component of the evolving global regulatory framework covering risk control, capital discipline and reporting.

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The European Central Bank has today published the Report on Financial Structures (RFS) 2015. The RFS succeeds the Banking Structures Report (BSR) and covers not only the banking sector, but also other financial intermediaries, such as insurance corporations and pension funds (ICPFs), as well as non-bank and non-insurance financial intermediaries. Looking at interconnectedness across different parts of the financial sector, the report shows that banks and other financial intermediaries (OFIs) are the largest holders of loans. OFIs are also the largest counterparties. For debt securities, banks are both the largest holders and the largest counterparties.  Continue reading…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently published its response to the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) payday lending market investigation. In February 2015, the CMA proposed six remedies to improve competition in the payday lending market, following the introduction of a price cap for high-cost short-term credit (HCSTC) by the FCA last year.

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Dollar Financial UK (Dollar), trading as The Money Shop, Payday UK, Payday Express and Ladder Loans has agreed with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to refund over £15.4 million to 147,000 customers, who may have suffered detriment as a result of the firm’s affordability checks, debt collection practices and systems errors.

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The financial and economic crises have led to an enormous plumbing exercise, involving a fundamental re-design of the global and European regulatory and supervisory system. This book systematically assesses the big items on the G-20 and EU agendas and the effectiveness with which they have been implemented in the EU. Its publication coincides with the demand by European Commissioner Jonathan Hill, in the context of the Capital Markets Union, for a ‘comprehensive review’ of the impact and coherence of EU legislation in the area of financial services.
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Managing health, safety and security risks to workers on international travel and assignment is the subject of a new paper from the Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA), International SOS, the world’s leading medical and travel security risk services company and global law firm DLA Piper.

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ESMA is extending the deadline for its open call for candidates for its Corporate Finance Standing Committee’s Consultative Working Group (CFSC CWG) to 31 October.  Continue reading…