News
GETTING AWAY WITH IT
January 19 2018
“The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has prosecuted eight cases of insider trading in the past five years and secured 12 convictions.”
It is all the more important for firms to establish and reinforce – continuously – the right culture themselves rather than rely on wrongdoers being caught by others. Markets and market participants we can trust are key to the reputation of the financial sector.
ALL CHANGE AT THE FCA?
January 5 2018
The new Chair of the FCA, Charles Randell, is a critical and very welcome appointment. There will, of course, be much for him to deal with when he takes up his appointment. One thing for him to ponder is the somewhat depressing fact that the level of misconduct among firms was the same in 2015 as in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis. Perhaps this is because more such misconduct is being discovered and punished; perhaps more people are speaking up about the misconduct they witness. Still one would have hoped that some lessons had been learnt by now. And if not now, when?
Without the right culture you will always be fighting a losing battle
December 29 2017
A recent FT article on rogue traders discusses some of the issues arising with how to stop them effectively.
“The simplest and most frequent — and most depressing [sign] — is that people are liars,” says the first compliance executive. “People have lied on their CV quite often about something quite minor,” the executive adds. “People rationalise it by saying it was only a lie about something small and they forget the critical lesson that . . . if someone lies and gets away with it, then before they even go through your compliance training they’ve been taught that they can lie and get away with it.”
“You can never eliminate the possibility of people doing bad things and banking tends to attract the type of people that are inclined to push the boundaries – people who are greedy and stupid around money.”