These are some of the compliance related stories that recently caught my attention.
Valeant may get bank waivers but risks default with SEC and NYSE by Francine McKenna in MarketWatch
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. may get a waiver from its bank lenders to file its Form 10-K annual report and first-quarter report later than required. But that doesn’t solve the problem of who will sign off on those reports and whether they will be ready in time to meet its reporting obligations to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange. [More…]
Why Compliance Matters: Credit Suisse Edition by Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance
The real news for compliance professionals—or anyone else working in finance who wonders why compliance is supposedly so important—is the outburst Credit Suisse’s new CEO Tidjane Thiam delivered while disclosing those 2,000 job cuts. The cuts, plus a $346 million write-down in business the bank took this quarter, were required because of sloppy risk management and compliance. [More…]
LONDON ‘KLEPTOCRACY TOUR’ FEATURES OLIGARCHS’ MANSIONS (WITH VIDEO) by Richard L. Cassin in the FCPA Blog
How do the wealthiest citizens of post-Soviet countries keep their money safe? For some, it’s simple: just buy a palatial home in London. To show the public how it’s done, anti-corruption campaigners took journalists on a “Kleptocracy Tour” of London, showing them residences owned by foreign oligarchs. [More…]
Court Won’t Hear Dispute Over Constitutionality of SEC’s Administrative Law Judges by Rodney F. Tonkovic, J.D. in Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation
The Supreme Court has denied certiorari in three securities-related cases. The court declined to hear Laurie Bebo’s argument that the Seventh Circuit misapplied the high court’s jurisdictional test in ruling she could not challenge the constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative law judges in a federal district court. The second petition denied today was brought by an adviser seeking review of an SEC administrative law judge’s finding of liability for market manipulation. The Court also let stand a Fifth Circuit decision finding that the extender provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) preempted the statute of repose in the Texas Securities Act. [More…]
Can Securities Regulation Solve Social Problems? by Hans Christensen, Eric Floyd, Lisa Liu and Mark Maffett in the CLS Blue Sky Blog
Regulators seem to think so. In the Dodd-Frank Act, policymakers made an unprecedented move towards using securities regulation to address issues unrelated to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) core mission of protecting investors and maintaining the fair and efficient functioning of financial markets. The Dodd-Frank Act requires financial statement dissemination of information regarding purchases of war minerals from Congo and mine health and safety performance. The objectives of these policies are noble—more than ten million people have died in Africa’s Great War and every year hundreds of workers are injured or killed in U.S. mines. Yet, can such regulation affect wars or improve mine safety? Research by Hans B. Christensen, Mark Maffett, and Lisa Liu from the University of Chicago and Eric Floyd from Rice University suggests it can. [More…]
RECOGNIZE A LOW TRUST ORGANIZATION, AND REAP THE REWARDS OF A HIGH TRUST CULTURE by Barbara Kimmel in the FCPA Blog
Not just Barclays but many organizations find themselves in trust traps because they hold on to the notion that trust and ethics are “soft skills.” So over time, trust and ethics in their organizations are overlooked or taken for granted, and eventually decline.
In fact, that’s the pattern of decline we can see across all major institutions, public and private, in every industry and segment.
To avoid falling into that pattern, leaders need to recognize the warning signs of a decline in low trust and ethics. Only by seeing the problem can they bring a solution. [More…]