|
|
|
|
|
The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Financial Regulators Push Banks to Transition Away From Libor
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is among top financial officials warning financial institutions not to delay replacing the London interbank offered rate as a benchmark. PHOTO: HOLLIE ADAMS/POOL/SHUTTERSTOCK
|
|
|
|
Good morning. Regulators are ramping up efforts to end Libor trades by year-end. Top U.S. financial officials on Friday pressed banks to stop using the London interbank offered rate on new transactions by the end of 2021, warning that firms aren’t moving swiftly enough to replace the benchmark for hundreds of trillions of dollars in financial contracts.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other top officials pressed the issue at a meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group that monitors the stability of the financial system.
[Continued below...]
|
|
|
“We are at a key inflection point,” Randal Quarles, the Fed’s point person on financial regulation, said at the meeting. “The deniers and the laggards are engaging in magical thinking. Libor is over.”
The exhortations amount to the strongest and clearest guidance yet from top policy makers about the risks to banks for writing new contracts based on Libor. The benchmark is scheduled for replacement at the end of 2021 in the wake of a manipulation scandal.
Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week told brokers that facilitate derivatives trading among large banks that they should stop using Libor, or the London interbank offered rate, as a reference rate by July 26. The Tuesday announcement could accelerate the push to phase out the troubled interest-rate benchmark, which underpins trillions of dollars worth of financial contracts.
|
|
|
|
From Risk & Compliance Journal
|
|
|
German Lawmakers Approve Rule Aimed at Boosting Women in Corporate Boardrooms
|
|
Some of Germany’s largest companies must ensure they have at least one woman on their management boards under legislation passed by the country’s lower house of parliament.
The bill, approved Friday by the Bundestag, requires publicly listed companies that have more than 2,000 employees, more than three management board seats and a supervisory board structure with equal representation from employees and shareholders to include at least one woman management director.
|
|
|
|
|
An Amazon event in Seattle in 2019. One of the bills in Congress that targets self-preferencing could affect how the e-commerce company conducts its retail business. PHOTO: TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
|
|
|
|
House lawmakers proposed a raft of bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in the country’s biggest tech companies, including a bill that seeks to make Amazon.com Inc. and other large corporations effectively split in two or shed their private-label products.
The bills, announced Friday, amount to the biggest congressional broadside yet on a handful of technology companies—including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. as well as Amazon —whose size and power have drawn growing scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and Europe.
|
|
|
Germany on Friday removed a legislative quirk that had made it a prime destination for globally active patent litigators who increasingly target fast-growing tech companies.
Until now, patent owners were able to almost instantly obtain temporary bans from courts on the sale of products accused of patent infringement. That and a network of fast, specialized courts, had made Germany a popular venue for legal patent claims targeting international companies such as Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
|
|
|
-
The Justice Department during the Trump administration sought records from Apple Inc. relating to communications by House Intelligence Committee members as well as some of their aides and family members, a committee official said. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog and Senate Democrats vowed to investigate the Trump administration’s secret seizure of communication records.
-
A standoff between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the cruise industry over whether to require passengers to show proof of Covid-19 vaccines is coming to a head as some cruise lines prepare to relaunch ships from their top ports in the state this summer.
-
Dan Kamensky broke bankruptcy laws with a series of frantic messages over a few hours in a long-running fight over Neiman Marcus Ltd.
-
Americans Michael Taylor and Peter Taylor pleaded guilty in Tokyo on Monday to the charge of helping former Nissan Motor Co. chief Carlos Ghosn escape Japan in a box aboard a private jet in late 2019.
|
|
|
|
|
A group recites the party oath in front of a screen showing Mr. Xi in Shanghai, June 4. PHOTO: ALY SONG/REUTERS
|
|
|
|
The Chinese government is now calling on big tech companies like Tencent Holdings Ltd., online retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. to open up the data they collect from social media, e-commerce and other businesses, according to official documents and interviews with people involved in policy-making.
The complex new web of laws and regulations around sharing digital records is being driven by the huge growth in data held by China’s tech giants—and a belief that the government should be able to access it. The efforts are also part of Mr. Xi’s quest to rein in the increasingly powerful tech sector, which has pushed back on some of Beijing’s previous data-sharing efforts. The most recent law, passed Thursday, will make it harder for companies to resist such requests.
|
|
|
-
McDonald’s Corp. said hackers stole some data from its systems in markets including the U.S., South Korea and Taiwan, in another example of cybercriminals infiltrating high-profile global companies.
-
Puerto Rico’s main power provider suffered a cyberattack shortly before a fire at a substation in San Juan Thursday caused blackouts for hundreds of thousands of residents, the company said.
|
|
|
|
|
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Biden met Saturday on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in St. Ives, England. PHOTO: HANDOUT/GETTY IMAGES
|
|
|
|
President Biden is pushing world leaders to call out China over allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang as the Group of Seven leading economies agreed to a global infrastructure plan meant to compete with Beijing.
Mr. Biden joined leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K. for a session focused on China on the second day of the G-7 summit. The issue of how aggressively to address China has divided world leaders, with Mr. Biden urging democratic nations to jointly confront Beijing and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for a more cautious approach.
|
|
|
|
|
An Exxon refinery in Baton Rouge, La. PHOTO: KATHLEEN FLYNN/REUTERS
|
|
|
|
-
Christopher James, who once owned a coal mine, was an improbable activist for change at oil giant, Exxon Mobil Corp. But he was able to convince Wall Street’s biggest money managers to back his thesis.
-
Companies are recruiting new leaders again—and they’re reimagining the way they do it.
-
Toshiba Corp. said two executives and two outside directors would resign after they were accused of working with the government against foreign shareholders, the first fallout in a scandal that has highlighted Japan’s business-government ties.
|
|
|
|
|
A medical worker in a protective suit administers a Covid-19 test in Zhuhai, China, on June 8. PHOTO: CHINA DAILY/REUTERS
|
|
|
|
-
As Western economies roar back to life, a fresh wave of Covid-19 clusters in Asia—where vaccination campaigns remain in their early stages—is creating new bottlenecks in the global supply chain, threatening to push up prices and weigh on the post-pandemic recovery.
-
The employees who return to the office after a year of remote work aren’t the employees their bosses remember.
-
In the latest sign of the U.S. economy’s post-pandemic disarray, even companies that have built domestic supply chains are running up against extreme shortages of goods and labor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|