| Long View on Volcker RuleIf the Volcker Rule is approved, growing liquidity premiums may benefit long-term investors. |
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| Proposed Uniform Fiduciary Standard Poses Risks of Its OwnDelivering on one of its many mandates from the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC has issued a proposed uniform federal fiduciary standard for brokers and advisers. |
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| A New Era in Anti-corruption EnforcementBillions of dollars in fines, penalties and professional fees paid by global companies signal that we are in a global regulatory environment that has bribery and corruption firmly in focus -- and will not let go |
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| The Regulators and Their CROsCreating a central risk office has become a best practice for financial regulatory agencies, which can leave then competing for talent with regulated companies. |
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| Market Discipline Disclosure: A Best Practice Approach for Regulatory ReportingEarly risk detection and steady risk monitoring have become increasingly important to regulators and financial institutions. This regulatory-compliant disclosure solution uses business intelligence as its core technology. |
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| Compliance and Ethics: Demonstrating Program EffectivenessWith expanded regulations going into effect, financial services firms must not only show that they have compliance and ethics programs in place, but also be capable of demonstrating that they are actually working. |
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| Basel III: The Road to ComplianceFinancial institutions need to adopt best practices to meet new regulatory requirements for liquidity management, capital allocation and stress testing. |
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| The SEC's New ProfThe Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Risk, Strategy and Innovation is on to its second director -- Craig Lewis. |
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| Securitization and Its DiscontentsSecuritization is an integral part of the financial sector. New quantitative risk retention requirements may succeed in realigning some of the incentive problems that produced troublesome nonlinearities during the financial crisis. |
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| TARP Scorecard: A Financial And Risk OverviewWhile TARP could be largely credited today for Wall Street’s resurgence, the program continues to be roundly criticized for its limited impact on US consumers and small businesses. |
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| Enforcement By HotlineAs the U.S. prosecution of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam unfolded, bringing insider trading and securities fraud charges into focus, Kenneth Springer saw a business opportunity -- an ethical one. |
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| To Lift a Frontier Market: Q&A With Palestinian Monetary Authority HeadThe Palestine Monetary Authority and its governor, Jihad al-Wazir, have had their work cut out in the face of regional conflicts and geopolitical uncertainties. |
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| Trading BrakeHigh-frequency trading is hardly a new phenomenon, but it has by all accounts been accelerating in recent years, and regulators have been paying closer attention. |
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| Risk Management Ramifications of Dodd-FrankThe Dodd-Frank Act impacts the fundamental infrastructure of the financial markets, the activities of financial institutions and the very definition of financial entities. |
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| Regulatory Reform: Transition ChallengesThe economic and risk management impact of Dodd-Frank and Basel III, in the form of new rules for proprietary trading, capital and liquidity, will be huge. |
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| Hard Tax for Easy MoneyThe Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin bequeathed to the world the concept of the Tobin tax, a small levy on foreign currency transactions that in theory would help to stabilize exchange rates while generating substantial revenues for worthy purposes. When economies slowed in 2008-’09 and government finances were squeezed, the Tobin tax gained new, well, currency. |
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| Green Light for Clearing ModelFor the past two years, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and NYSE Euronext have been working on a way to streamline margining and risk management calculations for cash and derivatives positions in the fixed-income market. |
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| Valuations, Disclosures and ConvergenceA long-expected transition from U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to International Financial Reporting Standards is looming, with the potential to wreak havoc on the processes that precede and underlie a company’s financial reporting. |
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| The Incremental Risk Capital Charge: A Risk Management ChallengeThe IRC seeks to equalize the capital treatment between the trading book and the banking book, and reduce the regulatory arbitrage opportunities that still remain in the regulatory framework. |
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| Reval Embraces and Stresses ComplianceIn contrast to some financial industry interests who have lately pushed back against some provisions of last year’s Dodd-Frank Act, New York- based Reval, presenting itself as a thought leader as well as a solutions company for the derivatives industry, has sounded more accepting. |
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| The Great Risk RaceThree years ago, when Yang Haitao, an experienced financial risk manager, moved to Shanghai to join Nanyang Commercial Bank (China), he knew it was going to be more than a routine job change. As senior risk manager for the subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Nanyang, Yang was to take charge of the bank’s implementation of the Basel II international capital standards. |
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| Decoding Basel III: Buffers, Benefits and BonusesNow that Basel III is taking shape and regulators are salvaging the damage done during the credit crisis, it is time to assess the new regulation. One thing is clear: the new rules are not always straightforward and lucid. |
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| Peering Into Our Regulatory Future: Where Do We Go From Here?Each financial crisis comes with its own hard-learned lessons. The current financial crisis has offered and continues to offer regulators, policymakers, politicians, financial institutions and the public ample opportunities to debate how to redesign, improve and refine the architecture of the global financial system. |
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| The Regulatory Arbitrage DilemmaArbitrage is a powerful force in financial markets. Usually, arbitrage makes the arbitrageur wealthier and leaves the market more efficient, ultimately benefiting everyone who is involved in the game. Indeed, this game was played extensively by financial institutions in the years preceding the 2007/2008 financial crisis. |
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| Dodd-Frank: Risk ImpactEarlier this year, after President Obama signed the historic Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, executives and risk managers at financial services companies were left to ponder its actual ramifications. |
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| Solvency II: Halfway HomeIn 2009, after nearly 10 years of preparation and thousands of technical contributions, the European Parliament finally passed the Solvency II insurance regulation. While the directive was initially widely regarded as a step in the right direction, the current implementation phase has generated some criticism. |
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| Managing Procyclicality in Developing CountriesThe management of procyclicality, which is a requirement of global regulatory directives such as Basel III, remains a major challenge -- not only for central bankers and academics but also for risk managers and consulting groups, particularly during financial crises. |
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| Changing the Risk Management LandscapeThe (re)insurance industry withstood the financial crisis relatively well. Even at the crisis’ worst point, insurance and reinsurance business was conducted as usual: prices remained relatively stable, capacity was provided to clients and claims were paid. |
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| Regulators Regroup The U.S. government has had plenty of opportunity to use its 20/20 hindsight on credit rating agencies’ role in the financial crisis. |
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| The New OTC Derivatives MarketThe recent financial crisis has been the most severe since the Great Depression. Its causes are complex but include a credit bubble with sustained low rates and low volatility, along with a facilitating regulatory environment. |
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| Islamic Finance, ClarifiedThe Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), the independent regulator overseeing the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), is seeking to bring clarity to its Islamic finance rules by condensing them into a single handbook. |
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| The Walker Review Echoes Beyond the Financial SectorThe U.K. financial industry has gotten its fill of reform, risk management and governance prescriptions, beginning with last year’s Turner Review, a thorough crisis retrospective spearheaded by Financial Services Authority chairman Adair Turner. In November, ex-Morgan Stanley International chairman David Walker delivered his sequel. |
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| FSA Taps Risk Expertise for International DirectorshipThe U.K.’s Financial Services Authority sent an unequivocal message about the importance of risk management by creating the position of managing director for risk -- held by Sally Dewar, reporting to CEO Hector Sants, as does head of supervision Jon Pain -- in its sweeping October 2009 reorganization. |
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| Brainpower at the SEC In mid-September, the Securities and Exchange Commission established a Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation to get a leg up on emerging financial market trends and risks. |
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| Risk Management, Washington StyleJonathan Sokobin, a University of Chicago-trained economist, leads the SEC’s Office of Risk Assessment through its most challenging times. |
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| Things Bad BegunThe credit crisis has left banks paralyzed, with toxic assets on their books they can afford neither to hold nor to sell without government assistance. One bold proposal to clear out the problem is to concentrate all bad assets in a single bad bank. How does such a scheme work? |
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| Capital After the ShockWithout the efforts that have been made to comply with the Basel II capital standards, we would be in a much worse position than we are in now. As banks invested in understanding their risks and collected data to understand what was in their portfolios, the concept of holding capital relative to the risk of the individual assets was a great step forward from Basel I. |
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| Who Are the Bosses?Even as regulation dominated the agenda at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s annual meeting in New York, a panel of brokerage executives took a different, though perhaps not altogether surprising, turn. |
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| Regulatory ConvergenceThe principal U.K. and U.S. financial market regulators have long talked the talk of cross-border cooperation and information sharing. Financial Services Authority chief executive Hector Sants and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro made it more tangible in September. |
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| Systems Rise to the Carbon OccasionConsciousness about greenhouse gas reductions has corporations of every stripe accelerating preparations for self-assessments, regulatory compliance and participation in cap-and-trade markets. |
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| A New Reform VoiceWashington attracts no shortage of academics and consultants who offer commentary and, at times, dissenting views on financial policy. The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee at the American Enterprise Institute is a case in point. |
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| Japan's Lost DecadeThe Japanese macroeconomic environment in the second half of the 1980s was characterized by above-average economic growth and near zero inflation. These positive conditions, resulting in a significant decline in Japan’s country risk premium and a marked upward adjustment in its growth expectations, boosted asset prices and fueled rapid credit expansion |
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| Think Tank Takes ShapeLondon’s standing as a global financial capital took a beating in the market declines of 2007-’08. Some officials have expressed concern that the U.K.’s regulator, the Financial Services Authority, lost some of its global clout in the process -- something that the Turner Review might have begun to rectify. |
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| The Rollout of Basel II and Its Impact on Banks’ Regulatory MetricsDuring a time when many banks have desperately needed to raise or shore up capital, the implementation of the Basel II capital accord has been taking place in European countries and in many other nations across the globe. |
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