Category: Finance and Markets

The lead manager in a funds scandal that led to a $6bn settlement between Germany’s Allianz and US authorities has pleaded guilty to investment adviser fraud, two years after two other managers pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme. The scandal at one of its US asset management units rocked Allianz, one of the world’s biggest insurance groups, casting doubt over its control functions and triggering an apology from its chief executive. Gregoire Tournant pleaded guilty on Friday to…

The United States was growing desperate, months before its entry into the Second World War. It was gravely short of aluminum, and scrambling for suppliers. Its solution: turn north to Canada.  American public money flooded into Quebec, building the aluminum industry that supplied raw materials for Allied planes and tanks. “I would be willing to buy aluminum from anybody,” said Harry Truman, then still a U.S. senator, in 1941 hearings on the topic. “I don’t care whether it is the…

SINGAPORE – Singapore’s competition watchdog has assessed that ANA Holdings’ proposed acquisition of Japanese cargo airline Nippon Cargo Airlines (NCA) will not result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market in Singapore. The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) said on May 24 that it arrived at this conclusion after a six-month review, which also took into account public feedback. The commission launched the review after ANA and NCA submitted an application on Dec 7, 2023, arguing…

A unit of defunct lender Credit Suisse will seek to overturn an order to pay US$743 million (S$1 billion) to a billionaire client over the actions of a notorious rogue banker at Singapore’s top court on April 8. The sum was awarded after a lower court earlier ruled that the bank’s trust had failed to safeguard the assets of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the former prime minister of Georgia. It was revised down from an initial US$926 million in a sprawling case…

LONDON/ZURICH – A year after the banking crisis that felled Credit Suisse, the authorities are still considering how to fix lenders’ vulnerabilities – including in Switzerland, where the bank’s takeover by rival UBS created a behemoth. The Swiss government-sponsored rescue of Credit Suisse and US bank salvages in March 2023 doused the immediate fires kindled by a run at little-known US regional lender Silicon Valley Bank. But regulators and lawmakers are only starting to address how banks could better withstand…

JPMorgan is facing nearly $350 million in fines from bank regulators due to issues with its trade surveillance program. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Thursday that it was assessing a $250 million civil penalty against JPMorgan Chase Bank because it found that the company “operated with gaps in trading venue coverage and without adequate data controls required to maintain an effective trade surveillance program.” The OCC said it found that JPMorgan failed to monitor billions of…

  Bitcoin topped US$71,000 for the first time, advancing for a sixth straight day and taking this year’s rally to almost 70 per cent on the back of massive inflows into US exchange-traded funds.  The original cryptocurrency jumped as much as 3.2 per cent to US$71,631.45 on March 11.  “This rally comes following a weak Asian trading session in which shorts tested the conviction of longs – it appears the longs have given a rather convincing positive answer,” said Mr…

As you read through the details of the DOJ investigation, ask yourself why Boeing was permitted to regulte itself. Deregulation is a choice made by government.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) has initiated a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner incident that occurred on an Alaska Airlines plane earlier this year, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, the DOJ has reached out to passengers and crew members, including pilots and flight attendants, who were on…

Barclays (BARC.L), opens new tab has agreed to sell about $1.1 billion of credit card debt in the United States to Blackstone. Banks globally have been making greater use of credit risk transfers to shed risk from loan portfolios, Reuters has reported, with investors sharing the risk of losses. (See Corporate home buyouts: homelessness, mortgage & rent crisis rising) Barclays’ investment bank acted as an advisor to Blackstone on the transaction. (Reuters)  Blackstone’s investment has been made through insurance accounts managed…

A Hong Kong court has ordered the liquidation of China Evergrande, the real estate firm with more than $300bn (£236.1bn) of debts, amid deepening fears for the territory’s wider corporate health. Justice Linda Chan ruled Evergrande had been unable to offer a concrete restructuring plan to creditors – more than two years after defaulting on a bond repayment and after several court hearings over the lack of a restructuring plan. “It is time for the court to say enough is…

Morgan Stanley will pay $249 million to settle a criminal investigation, as well as a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The SEC said the bank generated more than $100 million in illicit profits as a result of misconduct by Pawan Passi, the bank’s former head of its US equity syndicate desk, and another employee.  Morgan Stanley has been under investigation by the SEC since 2019 over its handling of block trades (a business that the bank dominates), and the…

Attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission apologized to a judge on Thursday for misrepresenting facts used to secure a restraining order and asset freeze against a crypto firm. In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court of Utah, in response to the judge’s order to show cause for its misstep, the SEC attorneys wrote that the commission “deeply regrets these orders” and promised to conduct mandatory training for staff members involved in the investigation. “I fully appreciate the…

NEW YORK – The US dollar is poised for its worst year since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic as Wall Street bets the Federal Reserve is set to lower interest-rates after safely reining in prices. After being whipsawed by false starts calling for the end of the Fed’s rate hiking regime, a Bloomberg gauge of the greenback is down nearly 3 per cent since January in the steepest annual drop for the US currency since 2020. In line with…

SINGAPORE – The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed a $3.9 million civil penalty on Credit Suisse for its failure to prevent or detect misconduct by relationship managers (RMs) in its Singapore branch. Credit Suisse paid the penalty to the regulator immediately after it was imposed, and as part of the settlement, also separately compensated its affected clients, said MAS in a statement on Dec 28. The RMs had provided clients with inaccurate or incomplete post-trade disclosures, resulting in…

Britain has issued more than 120 financial penalties to offshore companies that have failed to comply with transparency legislation designed to uncover illicit wealth hidden in the UK property market. The Register of Overseas Entities was created after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to help the UK government crack down on oligarchs and other kleptocrats. Individuals that own British property through offshore vehicles had until the end of January 2023 to register such entities and publicly reveal their ownership at Companies…

Note from Corruption Ledger Spotify is a publicly traded company headquartered in Luxembourg. Swedish founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon started Spotify as a small start-up in Stockholm, Sweden in 2006.  Job cuts don’t just affect those who are laid off. It creates a culture of fear for remaining employees, who must work additional hours and maneuver to adapt to new demands, the reorganization of departments, and new or altered functions assigned to them. Expectations are often unrealistic, which also…