The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published the priorities to be considered by listed companies, and their auditors, when preparing and auditing their 2017 financial statements. These priorities are set out in the annual Public Statement on European Common Enforcement Priorities (Statement), through which ESMA promotes the consistent application of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
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We talk a lot about risk appetite, but what does it mean in practice? That was the question posed by Airmic deputy CEO Julia Graham at the Cambridge risk summit. The event also heard from a leading academic that knowledge is an often-neglected area of risk management.

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by Philipp Härle, Andras Havas and Hamid Samadari

Banks have made dramatic changes to risk management in the past decade—and the pace of change shows no signs of slowing. Here are five initiatives to help them stay ahead. Risk management in banking has been transformed over the past decade, largely in response to regulations that emerged from the global financial crisis. But we believe it could be set to undergo even more sweeping change in the next decade. Indeed, while risk-operational processes such as credit administration today account for some 50 percent of the function’s staff, and analytics just 15 percent, by 2025 those figures could be around 25 percent and 40 percent respectively. Continue reading…

With the launch of euro zone quantitative easing on January 22, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi hopes to have delivered on his pledge to do “whatever it takes” to safeguard the region’s prospects. It was not quite a design classic but it was a feat of engineering nevertheless. The quantitative easing programme unveiled by ECB President Mario Draghi on last Thursday was – save for a few missing components – a pretty impressive machine. Continue reading…

The Swiss National Bank recently scrapped its CHF/EUR currency peg in an unexpected move that roiled financial markets. Here, we explain what may have been behind the move and its implications. What did the Swiss National Bank do and what was the reaction in the financial markets ? The SNB abandoned the CHF’s exchange rate peg against the EUR, which had been set at EUR1.20 since September 2011. The CHF rallied sharply in response to the move, gaining as much as 40 per cent against the EUR at one point, and hitting its highest level against the USD in three years. Such volatility is extremely rare in G-10 currencies. Continue reading…

Recently the German newspaper Handelsblatt had an interesting interview with Mario Draghi, President of the ECB about the future of Europe.

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