Banks are special, so is corporate governance of banks. It differs considerably from general corporate governance. Specific corporate governance needs exist also for insurance companies and other financial institutions. This article, Better Governance of Financial Institutions, analyzes the economic, legal and comparative research on governance of financial institutions and covers the reforms by the European Commission, the European Banking Authority, CDR IV and Solvency II up to the end of 2012. External corporate governance, in particular by the market of corporate control (takeovers), is more important for firms than for banks, at least under continental European practice.

For financial institutions, the scope of corporate governance goes beyond the shareholders (equity governance) to include debtholders, insurance policy holders and other creditors (debt governance). Some include the state as stakeholder, but the role of the state is better understood as setting the rules of the game in a regulated industry. From the perspective of supervision debt governance is the primary governance concern. Equity governance and debt governance face partly parallel and partly divergent interests of management, shareholders, debtholders and other creditors, and supervisors. Economic theory and practice show that management tends to be risk-averse for lack of diversification but may be more risk-prone because of equity-based compensation in end games and under similar circumstances. Shareholders are risk-prone and interested in corporate governance. Debtholders are risk-averse and interested in debt governance. Supervisors are risk-averse and interested in maintaining financial stability and in particular in preventing systemic crises.

…continue reading: Better Governance of Financial Institutions

About a year ago, we published A New Playbook for Global Securities Litigation and Regulation, in which we detailed dramatic changes in the global securities regulatory and litigation arena driven by various factors, including not only the financial crisis of 2007-2008, but also changes in tolerance in the United States to litigation brought by foreign investors against public companies listed on non-U.S. exchanges.

One year later, the regulatory environment continues to revamp with new rules being issued constantly in the United States to conform to the legislative mandates set forth in the Dodd Frank Act. The United Kingdom and European Union also seek to reinforce previous global initiatives to reform and strengthen the Pan-European financial markets.

What is more ever-present, however, is the marked increase in global enforcement activities by regulators in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union, which are attempts to give teeth to the global financial reforms each jurisdiction felt necessary to potentially prevent a “repeat” of the financial crisis. This article seeks to address the increase in global securities enforcement activity and concludes that continued cooperation and coordination in enforcement activities will be required to seamlessly address the desire to strengthen global regulatory initiatives aimed at harmonizing and centralizing international securities regulation to create safer, more fundamentally sound financial markets for investors.

…continue reading: A New Playbook Part 2 — Global Securities Enforcement Stepping Up

The Financial Services Act 2012 (the “Act”), which comes into force on 1 April 2013, contains the UK government’s reforms of the UK financial services regulatory structure and will create a new regulatory framework for the supervision and management of the UK’s banking and financial services industry. The Act gives the Bank of England macro-prudential responsibility for oversight of the financial system and day-to-day prudential supervision of financial services firms managing significant balance-sheet risk. Three new bodies will be formed under the Act: the Financial Policy Committee (“FPC”), the Prudential Regulatory Authority (“PRA”) and the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”). While the Act mainly contains the core provisions for the UK government’s structural reforms and will therefore make extensive changes to Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (“FSMA”), as well as to the Bank of England Act 1998 and the Banking Act 2009, it also includes freestanding provisions in Part 3 (“mutual societies”), Part 4 (“collaboration between Treasury and Bank of England, FCA or PRA”), Part 5 (“inquiries and investigations”), Part 6 (“investigation of complaints against regulators”) and Part 7 (“offences relating to financial services”). With respect to the last of these, it should be noted that:

…continue reading: Financial Services Act 2012: A New UK Financial Regulatory Framework

The New Era of Swaps Market Reform

This hearing is occurring at an historic time in the markets. The CFTC now oversees the derivatives marketplace — across both futures and swaps. The marketplace is increasingly shifting to implementation of the common-sense rules of the road for the swaps market that Congress included in the Dodd-Frank Act.

For the first time, the public is benefiting from seeing the price and volume of each swap transaction. This post-trade transparency builds upon what has worked for decades in the futures and securities markets. The new swaps market information is available free of charge on a website, like a modern-day ticker tape.

For the first time, the public will benefit from the greater access to the markets and the risk reduction that comes with central clearing. Required clearing of interest rate and credit index swaps between financial entities begins next month.

For the first time, the public will benefit from specific oversight of swap dealers. As of today, 71 swap dealers are provisionally registered. They are subject to standards for sales practices, recordkeeping and business conduct to help lower risk to the economy and protect the public from fraud and manipulation. The full list of registered swap dealers is on the CFTC’s website, and we will update it as more entities register.

…continue reading: CFTC’s Progress on Wall Street Reform

The economic dislocations experienced in recent years, which far exceeded any since the 1930s, were the direct result of the financial crisis of 2007-08. The reforms enacted by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act were aimed at addressing the causes of the crisis. The reforms included changes to the FDIC’s deposit insurance program, a series of measures to curb excessive risk-taking at large, complex banks and non-bank financial companies and a mechanism for orderly resolution of large, nonbank financial companies.

The regulatory changes mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act require careful implementation to ensure they address the risks posed by the largest, most complex institutions while being sensitive to the impact on community banks that did not contribute significantly to the crisis. As implementation moves forward, the FDIC has been engaged as well in an extensive effort to better understand the forces driving long-term change among U.S. community banks and to solicit input from community bankers on these trends and on the regulatory process.

My testimony will address the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on the restoration of the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), our efforts to carry out the requirement of the Act to develop the ability to resolve large, systemic financial institutions, and our progress on some of the key rulemakings. In addition, I will briefly discuss the results of our recent community banking initiative.

…continue reading: FDIC’s Progress on Wall Street Reform

In 2013, banking organizations, securities firms, insurance companies, and other participants in the financial services industry should stop to consider how the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act has unfolded and to plan for new compliance duties that will or are likely to take effect. Regulators likewise would be advised to take a step back themselves and consider how implementation has proceeded. The incoming 113th Congress will certainly debate possible changes to Dodd-Frank, although the prospects for substantive follow-up legislation, corrective or otherwise, are uncertain at best.

This booklet broadly reviews the critical developments under Dodd-Frank that occurred during the second half of 2012 and considers how and what events may occur, as well as what trends may emerge in 2013. This is not an exhaustive review of all of the Dodd-Frank issues, but we have tried to identify those issues with important consequences for the financial services industry.

…continue reading: Dodd-Frank Implementation: Navigating the Road Ahead

There is a sensible compromise to the debate over money market fund reform that regulators should seriously consider: requiring a fluctuating share price for some money market funds owned by institutional investors, but not for those owned by retail investors. Currently, all money market funds may use a fixed share price – known as the “net asset value”, or NAV – at one dollar per share, subject to strict conditions.

Regulators have argued that a fixed NAV creates systemic risk in the financial system and misleads investors into thinking their investment is guaranteed. They believe that money market funds should instead calculate their NAV daily based on the market value of their investments, as stock and bond mutual funds do – meaning that the NAV may fluctuate from day to day. However, the fund industry argues that a fluctuating NAV would drastically undermine the utility of money market funds. Most investors use money market funds as an alternative to bank deposits, so most investors require the convenience and liquidity of a fixed-dollar account. Additionally, the industry points out that only two money market funds – both institutional – have ever caused any investor losses by “breaking the buck”.

…continue reading: Not All Money Market Funds Are Equal

On November 13, 2012, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), faced with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that has been deadlocked over whether or how to address concerns about money market funds (MMFs), voted unanimously to propose three MMF reforms. The vote was the FSOC’s first exercise of its power under section 120 of the Dodd-Frank Act to recommend heightened regulatory standards to financial regulatory agencies. If finalized, today’s proposal will result in a recommendation that the SEC act on at least one of the reforms. [1]

Last August, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, in a controversial decision, tabled proposed rulemaking on MMFs because of the lack of support from three Commissioners of the SEC. In a letter sent in late September, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged the FSOC members at their November meeting to take up MMF reform through their section 120 powers. According to Secretary Geithner at today’s meeting, the FSOC’s decision was taken on the recommendation of Chairman Schapiro.

The proposal from the FSOC presents three options for MMF reform, two of which were before the SEC in August, and requests public comment during the 60 days following publication of the proposal in the Federal Register. The FSOC does not regard the three options as mutually exclusive and thus could recommend more than one to the SEC. The three options are as follows:

…continue reading: Money Market Funds: FSOC Proposes Reforms

Four years ago, this nation was suffering from a near-collapse of our financial system.

While there are differences of opinion as to what was the most significant trigger, a bi-partisan Senate Committee report — known as the Levin-Coburn Report — asserted that the crisis was the result of “high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”

While this period of our history will be written and re-written over and over again, Congress and the Administration knew that the status quo was unacceptable. So together they passed landmark legislation to address many of the issues that were highlighted by that tumultuous period.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a vital and comprehensive response to the financial crisis — an event that devastated the American economy, cost the American people trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, and undermined the confidence that our financial system requires if it is to thrive and support a growing economy.

The sweeping scope of this financial reform legislation sometimes obscures the fact that, despite its breadth, it is rooted in a handful of sound principles that should have been more firmly in place before the crisis, and whose embrace serves to make markets more stable and efficient. Simple principles like. . . .

…continue reading: Dodd-Frank Principles and Provisions

The days of the opaque swaps market are ending. On October 12, 2012, we are shifting to a new era of transparency and commonsense rules of the road for the swaps market.

New Era — Swaps Market Reform Becomes a Reality

During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt and Congress put in place similar rules to bring transparency to the securities and futures markets, and protect investors from fraud, manipulation and other abuses.

These critical reforms of the 1930s are at the foundation of our strong capital markets and many decades of economic growth.

Swaps emerged in the 1980s to provide producers and merchants a means to lock in the price of commodities, interest rates and currency rates. Our economy benefits from a well-functioning swaps market, as it’s essential that companies have the ability to manage their risks.

The swaps marketplace, however, has lacked the necessary transparency to best benefit Main Street businesses and common-sense rules to protect the public.

…continue reading: The New Era of Swaps Market Reform