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’CPP’s identity crisis
The price action on Tuesday morning in CPP Group, London’s latest IPO flop, following its clash with the FSA.
For context, the March 2010 float price was 235p. Ouch.
FSA vs CPPGroup
Profit warning du soir:
CPPGroup Plc (“CPP” or “the Group”) announces that it is in discussions with the FSA in relation to certain issues surrounding the sale of the Group’s Card Protection and Identity Protection products. The FSA’s investigation only relates to such of the Group’s products as are sold into the UK,
The FSA is concerned about ETFs
The UK financial regulator the FSA appears (finally) to be on to the complexity issue that has been affecting the ETF industry for a long while now.
From the FSA’s ‘Retail Conduct Risk Outlook 2011″
Value for money, with the FSA
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has today announced its proposed Annual Funding Requirement (AFR) for 2011/12. The AFR for 2011/12 is £500.5m, up from £454.7m in 2010/11, a gross increase of 10.1% in overall funding.
House price rant
Pressure can do funny things. Just ask Steve Morgan.
The chairman and biggest shareholder of housebuilder Redrow has let rip at the company’s AGM on Thursday morning, accusing the government and regulators of deliberately suppressing housing demand at the very time a chronic housing shortage is laying the foundations for the next boom and bust cycle.
What’s going on inside the FSA?
Well, this is worrying. When even Britain’s Financial Services Authority acknowledges its own personnel problems, it must be serious.
From a memorandum the FSA recently sent to the Treasury Select Committee,
FSA reopens the Lehman files
Remember the just-who-is-a-sophisticated-investor debate around the Abacus case against Goldman Sachs earlier this year?
Here’s a strange UK coda.
The UK’s Financial Services Authority dished out not one but three fines on Wednesday to advisers which failed to give suitable guidance on structured products backed by Lehman Brothers.
FSA fine watch
Another day and another fine from the Financial Services Authority.
This time it’s Goldman Sachs on the receiving end. A £25m hit (reduced to £17.5m for good behaviour) for the heinous crime of not telling the FSA it was being investigated by the SEC over the Fab Fabrice/Abacus CDO case.
The FSA’s finance fix (Part III): dampening profits
Continued from Part II.
A valuation-based approach may be the FSA’s preferred option for fixing banks’ trading books and fortifying them against future risk, but it’s difficult, to say the least. The very thing the FSA is trying to remedy — inconsistent valuations — seem endemic in the financial system:
The FSA’s finance fix (Part II): attacking the arbitrage
Continued from Part I.
The idea that banks arbitraged accounting categories to avoid mark-to-market losses as credit markets seized up in 2008 and 2009, won’t exactly be surprising. Since 1996, financials have been allowed to choose whether to put assets in their banking book — held at amortised cost — or in their trading books,
The FSA’s finance fix (Part I): credit is different
Behold — your financial crisis/accounting/structured finance/financial reform reading for the weekend:
The 126-page discussion paper is from the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and it deals specifically with banks’ trading activities — something which,
Missing in action — 80% of SocGen trades [updated]
And we were wondering how Jerome Kerviel got away with it… Update: It’s a bit unfair to cite Kerviel on this one, actually — it just concerns misreported transactions in the UK branch, not fraud against the French parent.
Would the last person to leave the FSA please turn out the lights?
The chart below, from law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, doesn’t reflect flows into safe haven assets.
Nope.
It reflects outflows out of the UK financial services regulator, the FSA:
As the FT reported,
FSA fines RBS £5.6m for sanctions rules breaches
Or for ‘risking’ the integrity of UK financial services. (Really).
There’s some international criminal intrigue on Tuesday — the FSA has fined RBS for failing to prevent payments going to and from persons sanctioned by the UK government.
Crock regulation
From Britain’s financial regulator on Tuesday (translation ours):
The Financial Services Authority has fined David Jones, former finance director (FD) of Northern Rock PLC (NR) five bob and given him a spank.
From Bank of England to Bank of Everything
Financial Services Authority, the name of thy doom is, er, one of a selection of rubbish acronyms – as detailed in HM Treasury’s white paper on UK financial reform, released on Monday.
We’ve thus now got a bit more detail on the FSA’s successors — which include the PRA,
The FSA is adamant shorts will be outed
Not even death will get in the way of the FSA’s determination to disclose shorts.
The Financial Services Authority — otherwise known as the Britain’s premier zombie financial services regulator — has decided it definitely will be using its remaining powers to ferret out those scurvy short-sellers.
Norway doesn’t need no stinkin’ stress tests
The European Union’s banking stress tests cover 91 banks in 20 countries.
Seven of those financials are Nordic — but none of them are Norwegian.
Norway is of course, not a member of the EU, but it keeps close ties,
Star trader Guillaume Rambourg resigns from Gartmore
Guillaume Rambourg, the star hedge fund veteran at the FTSE-listed UK asset manager Gartmore has resigned from the firm.
Here’s the RNS:
Gartmore Group Limited
ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING GUILLAUME RAMBOURG
London,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- BP installs new spill cap, warns success “cannot be assured” — statement.
- Frank Timis’ African Minerals gets $1.5bn strategic Chinese investment – statement.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or, the FSA on auditors
Here’s a discussion paper to strike fear into the hearts of prompt debate among audit firms — another analysis of their failings in the banking crisis, carried out by the UK’s financial regulator, the FSA.
Financial stability is getting difficult
The first of the Bank of England’s 2010 Financial Stability reports is out.
In it, the BoE is rather more sanguine on the need for banks to quickly transition to a new (although now watered down) regulatory regime,
Epita-FSA-tic
Related link:
The FSA will cease to exist in its current form – FT Alphaville
The FSA will cease to exist in its current form
Selected highlights from UK chancellor George Osborne’s Mansion House speech:
First, regulation:
I can confirm that the Government will abolish the tripartite regime, and the Financial Services Authority will cease to exist in its current form.
The awards curse strikes at JP Morgan…
Last Friday:
[The Banker Innovation in Banking Technology Awards 2010]
Chair’s Choice and Innovation in Custody and Securities Services
Winner: JPMorgan (Worldwide Securities Services)
Project:
FSA fines JP Morgan record £33.2m
On Thursday, Britain’s Financial Services Authority whacked JP Morgan for failing to segregate client money during the merger with Chase — resulting in what regulators trumpeted as the FSA’s ‘largest ever’ fine at £33.32m.
Tearing flesh off the FSA’s bones
Typical. You launch a regulatory reign of terror so wide-ranging, so baldly inquisitorial, that it would make Robespierre himself blush, and what do you get?
Oblivion.
As the Guardian reports, Britain’s new chancellor George Osborne will probably abolish the FSA after all. Starting with his Mansion House address on 16 June:
The exposed case of “Client A”
Consider the following extract from a “final notice”, issued by the FSA on Wednesday as the UK regulator slapped a lifetime ban and a £100,000 fine on one Andrew Kerr, a commodity broker at Sucden Financial: