Pressure builds to delay MiFID II reforms

From Finextra –

“Pressure is mounting on the European Commission to postpone the implementation of securities market reforms under MiFID II by a year, as banks and brokers struggle to adapt their IT systems to meet the 2017 timetable.”

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Banks brace for more foreign exchange rigging exposure as civil lawsuits emerge

From YAHOO! Finance –

“Class-action cases are expected to follow vast fines for manipulating currency benchmarks.

Banks are bracing for hundreds of millions of pounds in new claims for foreign exchange manipulation from class-action lawsuits triggered by last week’s vast market rigging fines .

Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and four other banks were ordered on Wednesday to pay $6bn (£3.84bn) by UK and US authorities.

The Barclays penalty represents the biggest bank fine in British history.

The regulators, detailing how traders gathered in chatrooms using monikers such as “The Cartel” and “Coiled cobra” to rig the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market, also forced the banks to plead guilty to criminal charges.

Lawyers say that the fines, as well as an investigation from the European Commission, could be a springboard to damaging civil litigation in the UK and Europe.”

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MiFID II requirements “naïve” and “terrifying” says industry

From Banking Technology –

“The financial services industry faces a daunting task as the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation draws close to its final deadline, and grave concerns about inconsistencies in the rules and the pressures of meeting it remain.

Speaking at the FIX Trading Community conference this week, Stephen McGoldrick, regulation co-chair at the FIX Trading Community and director at Deutsche Bank, said: “It’s quite terrifying when you look at all there is to be done. “The mass of work brokers are facing is huge. As for the buy-side, In MiFID one there were big areas where they could say, ‘It’s OK, the sell-side will take care of that for us’. That luxury is not going to be available to them this time.”
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How do you identify staff having an impact on your risk profile?

From KPMG

“On 6 June 2014 the Commission Delegated Regulation N° 604/2014 of 4 March 2014 on the definition of “Identified Staff” was published in the Official Journal of the EU. It sets out qualitative and quantitative criteria that should be used by financial institutions when defining the categories of staff whose professional activities have a material impact on the institutions’ risk profiles (the “Identified Staff”).

Indeed, in the course of 2012, the European Banking Authority (EBA) conducted a survey aiming at assessing how legislators and supervisors in the various member states had implemented the CEBS Guidelines on Remuneration Policies and Practices in their legislative frameworks. The result showed that the numbers of “Identified Staff” differed considerably between Member States, but [that] there was a clear tendency of institutions to select very low numbers. It clearly became essential for the regulators to establish clear criteria and a harmonized process to identify risk takers in a single entity and within groups.

There are 6 articles that make up the new Regulation.”

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http://blog.kpmg.lu/how-do-you-identify-staff-having-an-impact-on-your-risk-profile/