Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?

06 February 2018

Authorities must be prepared to act against the invasive spread of cryptocurrencies to protect consumers and investors, Bank for International Settlements (BIS) General Manager Agustín Carstens said. In a lecture “Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?”, Mr Carstens said that for money to keep its value, it must be backed by accountable institutions which enjoy public trust. Here, central banks are key.

Continue reading…

The euro area’s three lines of defence

05 February 2018

Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, gave a speech about the macroeconomic stabilisation in the euro area. He says that there’s broad agreement that without our unprecedented actions, the euro area would have fared far worse. Even more people would have lost their jobs, and wages and prices would have stagnated for much longer, or would even have fallen. Although our actions were bold and unparalleled, we acted within our mandate, as confirmed by the European Court of Justice.
Continue reading…

Photo: https://pixabay.com

B&A Law and Wladimiroff Advocaten N.V. join forces

02 February 2018

Bennink & Amar Advocaten (B&A Law), who set up the first and only Dutch law firm fully specialised in economic sanctions and export controls, has joined forces with the best regulatory and criminal enforcement law firm of the Netherlands, Wladimiroff Advocaten N.V. Wladimiroff is fully responsible for the economic sanctions and export controls practice, under practically the same conditions as B&A Law. This makes it possible to provide even stronger enforcement practice in relation to sanctions and export controls. B&A Law have already successfully worked on several enforcement cases with Wladimiroff. At the same time, B&A Law practice adds a completely new dimension to that of Wladimiroff.

Mark Dunn

Mark Dunn

Segment Leader for Entity Due Diligence and Monitoring at LexisNexis

Global spread

01 February 2018

In October 2016 the International Standards Organisation issued the ISO 37001, a new standard that organisations and companies can use to certify their anti-bribery and corruption compliance procedures. The ISO 37001 was agreed by standards bodies in 37 countries and it is already being promoted by many countries across the world. Peru became the first Latin American country to implement the standard. One reason given for this is that in 2015 the country lost nearly $4 billion because of misappropriation of public funds, bribery and other types of corruption. The government of Montreal in Canada has appointed someone to analyse and propose how to apply the principles of the ISO 37001 to the city. Earlier, Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) launched the Singapore Standard, which is based on the ISO 37001. The standard has also been widely adopted in the Middle East and North Africa. Colin Keeney of Deloitte notes that six of the 37 countries involved in crafting the standard came from this region.

Continue reading…

Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement

01 February 2018

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met in December indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising at a solid rate. Gains in employment, household spending, and business fixed investment have been solid, and the unemployment rate has stayed low. On a 12-month basis, both overall inflation and inflation for items other than food and energy have continued to run below 2 percent. Market-based measures of inflation compensation have increased in recent months but remain low; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations are little changed, on balance.

Continue reading…

Bank of Russia joins International Information Exchange Agreement

31 January 2018

Victoria Saporta, Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), has announced that the Bank of Russia has become a member of the IAIS’ Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) – an international supervisory cooperation and information exchange agreement. Since the first jurisdiction was admitted in June 2009, membership in the IAIS MMoU has grown significantly to now include 65 signatories representing more than 70 percent of worldwide premium volume.

Continue reading…

Photo: https://pixabay.com

High-level Meeting for Africa on “Strengthening financial sector supervision and current regulatory priorities”

30 January 2018

Representatives from various sub-Saharan African central banks and supervisory authorities, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the Financial Stability Institute (FSI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) met in Cape Town for a High-level Meeting, hosted by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Continue reading…

Discussion on the EU implementation of MKR and CCR revised standards

29 January 2018

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a Discussion Paper on the implementation in the European Union (EU) of the revised market risk and counterparty credit risk frameworks, i.e. the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) and the Standardised Approach for Counterparty Credit Risk (SA-CCR). This paper discusses some of the most important technical and operational challenges to implement the FRTB and SA-CCR in the EU. The paper aims at providing some preliminary views on how these implementation issues could be addressed and, at the same time, seeks early feedback from the stakeholders on the proposals. The paper also puts forward a roadmap for the development of the regulatory deliverables on the FRTB and SA-CCR included in the CRR2 proposal. The consultation runs until 15 March 2018.
Continue reading…

Cryptocurrency

Mark Rabkin
Release date:December 2017
Language:English
ISBN:0999765809
Price:$ 29.93 (eBook)

Photo: https://pixabay.com

Towards a digitial ethics

26 January 2018

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) has carried out its work against the backdrop of two significant social-political moments: a growing interest in ethical issues, both in the public and in the private spheres and the im-minent entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018. For some, this may nourish a perception that the work of the EAG represents a challenge to data protection professionals, particularly to lawyers in the field, as well as to companies struggling to adapt their processes and routines to the requirements of the GDPR.

Continue reading…