Category: banks
Portugal central bank chief Mário Centeno ethics review after being proposed as PM
Portugal’s central bank governor Mário Centeno is facing an ethics review by an independent watchdog after he was proposed as the next prime minister by Socialist premier António Costa, who quit last week over a corruption scandal. Costa’s proposal has triggered a public spat between Centeno and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president who has the power to appoint prime…
Recent Discover Lawsuits Provide Compliance Lessons (Mannacio v. Discover Financial Services, et al., 23-cv-06788)
In September, a class action lawsuit (Mannacio v. Discover Financial Services, et al., No. 23-cv-06788 (N.D. Ill.)) was filed against Discover Financial Services (“Discover”) alleging Discover and certain current and/or former executives violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Specifically, the class action complaint alleged that the defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Discover…
FTX’s Bankman-Fried convicted on all counts: conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and money laundering by a New York jury in a landmark criminal verdict that is likely to condemn the former crypto tycoon to decades in prison […] The decision […] was delivered just after 7.40pm on Thursday, following less than five hours of deliberation by the jury’s nine women and three men…
Telecom Sector Sees Major Layoffs Despite Historic Stretch Of Tax Breaks, Regulatory Favors
The Trump era was very, very good to the country’s giant telecom monopolies. Trump officials doled out billions in tax breaks (AT&T nabbed $42 billion alone) and billions more in poorly tracked subsidies. It also approved anticompetitive mergers without even reading the details, and handed out all manner of regulator favors like the dismantling of net neutrality or the elimination…
Russian Hackers Accessed 632,000 Emails From Pentagon, Other Agencies: Report
Hackers have accessed approximately 632,000 emails from the Department of Defense and other federal agencies this year, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed. The report detailed a large-scale cyberattack in May 2023 in which emails from US government offices, private sectors, airlines, and academic entities were accessed by a suspected Russian group called “CL0P.” Alongside electronic personal data,…
Bond markets are being hit hard — and it’s likely to impact you
There is a sharp sell-off in the bond market, and it has big implications on both the economy and people’s pocketbooks. Yields on U.S. government bonds, especially the 10-year Treasury note, determine the interest rates that people pay on a lot of their debt, including mortgages and credit cards. And a key bond yield hasn’t been this high since 2007….
Hollywood and Netflix Flag ‘Priority’ Piracy Threats
Over the past two decades, online piracy has proven a massive challenge for the entertainment industries. It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but various anti-piracy group are doing their best to fight back. There’s a seemingly perpetual stream of takedowns, as evidenced by press releases that come out every week. However, some targets are particularly resistant to enforcement…
Microsoft: State hackers exploiting Confluence zero-day since September
Microsoft says a Chinese-backed threat group tracked as ‘Storm-0062’ (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy) has been exploiting a critical privilege escalation zero-day in the Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server since September 14, 2023. Atlassian had already notified customers about the active exploitation status of CVE-2023-22515 when it disclosed it on October 4, 2023. Still, the company withheld specific details on the…
Amazon sellers say they made a good living — until Amazon figured it out
Suavecito was the first product that Douglas Mrdeza listed to sell on Amazon back in 2014. He had ordered a bit too much of the specialty hair pomade for his barbershop in East Lansing, Michigan. He wanted to see whether he could offload some online. It sold out. So, he ordered more. This time he paid Amazon some extra money…
Israeli central bank to sell $41b of foreign currency to stabilise shekel amid Gaza war
JERUSALEM – The Bank of Israel said on Monday it will sell up to US$30 billion (S$41 billion) of foreign currency in the open market, in the central bank’s first ever sale of foreign exchange, to maintain stability during Israel’s war with Palestinian militants in Gaza. The move appeared to quickly calm the market as the shekel recovered from steep…
FCA sets out initial findings on bank account access and closures
The information supplied by banks, building societies and payment companies suggests that no firm closed an account between July 2022 and June 2023 primarily because of a customer’s political views. The Payment Accounts Regulations ban banks or building societies discriminating on this basis. The FCA will be doing further work with firms to verify the data and to better understand…
Canada’s Sikhs Grateful, and Afraid, After Trudeau’s India Allegations
OTTAWA — Canadian Sikhs are grateful to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for giving voice to their fears and standing up to India at the risk of a severe backlash from New Delhi, which he said could be linked to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. The Indian government considered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who was shot to…
UBS, Credit Suisse face growing probe over alleged Russian sanctions evasion
The US Department of Justice has stepped up its probe into Credit Suisse Group and UBS Group over suspected compliance failures that allowed Russian clients to evade sanctions, according to people familiar with the situation. What began as a series of subpoenas sent to a range of banks early this year has developed into a full-scale investigation focusing on Credit…
Zelenskyy returns to Washington as GOP dissent grows to funding war
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned to Washington on Thursday for a whirlwind one-day visit, this time to face the Republicans now questioning the flow of American dollars that for 19 months has kept his troops in the fight against Russian forces. Zelenskyy arrived at the Capitol to talk privately with Republican and Democratic leaders of the…
Florida: West Point sued over using race as an admissions factor
West Point was accused in a federal lawsuit Tuesday of improperly using race and ethnicity as factors in admissions by the same group behind the legal challenge that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissions. Students for Fair Admissions claims the U.S. Military Academy sets benchmarks for how many Black, Hispanic and Asian cadets there should…
Is US Heading for New Crisis 15 Years After the 2008 Credit Crunch?
The US could be heading for economic turmoil again 15 years after the 2008 financial crisis rocked the country, three experts have said. Global finance giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, more than 150 years after its founding. It was the first major US victim of the sub-prime mortgage collapse. The first warning of the Credit…