This scandal demonstrates that the regulatory architecture of family offices architecture is flawed and creates a refuge for those, like Bill Hwang and Steve Cohen who should have been banned for life. Penalties for white collar crime are virtually on non-existent and enforcement is extremely poor. Dodd-Frank did nothing to solve this: it altered regulation…
Among the changes are rules that would make directors of large companies liable should they collapse. Is personal liability for non-executive directors a good thing? Making directors personally liable for the collapse of companies is an unfortunate attempt to manage the fundamental risk of any corporate body that will have the unintended effect of making…
Stripe’s $95bn valuation shows that Fintech, for all its hype, is real. With Square at $110bn and Paypal at $290bn, “Fintech” companies are now breathing down the neck of, if not eclipsing traditional incumbents like Goldman Sachs with its $120bn market cap. That a company founded in 2010 can in 11 years be worth more…
Non-fungible tokens (“NFT’s) were born with the advent of Crypto-Kitties in 2017, operating on Ethereum. NFT’s allow specific individual things to be sold and traded on the blockchain. They are both scarce and more importantly can be unique, unlike a fungible commodity such as Bitcoin. Buyers can thus purchase individual NFT’s, and then resell…
Money can be divided into two categories: token based money, and account based money. Token based money such as currency notes or gold is like a bearer bond: ownership of the thing is the store of value. In the film Die Hard, when Hans Gruber broke into the Nakatomi Plaza at Christmas, he was doing…
AML: KEEPING FINANCE CLEAN In advance of the Politico Panel today with José Manuel Campa, Chairperson of the European Banking Authority and Sven Giegold from the European Parliament regarding “AML, Keeping Finance Clean”, there are a range of questions to be discussed: How much power should a single AML authority at the European level…
The strangest thing about the Gamestop issue was the conspiracy theories around payment for order flow, Citadel and Melvin Capital boss Gabe Plotkin. Some assumed that Robinhood had conspired against their users because their biggest customer, Citadel, was bailing out Melvin Capital. In fact, the issue was one of collateral. On 27th January 2020, Robinhood…
Fincen, a department of the US treasury responsible for collecting transactional information, put out a notice of proposed rule making in December: “Requirements for Certain Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currency or Digital”: DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY Financial Crimes Enforcement Network 31 CFR Parts 1010, 1020, and 1022 RIN 1506-AB47 Requirements for. This rule would require…
Please see the latest commentary below: PayPod – “Financial crime and the regulatory landscape are two critical things for any payments business or fintech to be aware of. As we begin this new year, this landscape is going to continue to evolve. That evolution is the focus of this podcast episode. Our guest on the…
Janet Yellen’s confirmation as treasury secretary is bound to have a significant impact on a range of issues, including but not limited to: Coronavirus and spending: PPP relief, and the potential for increased synthetic fraud China: Changes in sanctions, particularly related to China, Russia and North Korea Money laundering, and combatting terrorism and international financial…