Cowboy local regulator or the exposer of lax federal bureaucrats?
That’s the key question being asked about New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky after his explosive charge that London’s Standard Chartered bank abetted US$250 billion of money-laundering transactions with Iran. Standard Chartered won help on Wednesday from Britain’s central bank governor, who portrayed Lawsky as marching to his own tune, and marching out of step with federal regulators in Washington.
“One regulator, but not the others, has gone public while the investigation is still going on,” Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said at a news conference in London.
The US Treasury Department, in a letter responding to a request for clarification from British authorities, said it takes sanctions violations seriously.
In London, King drew unfavorable comparisons between the handling of this case and other US actions against British banks, such as the investigation of interest rate manipulation at Barclays PLC.
In the Barclays case, he said, all regulators in Britain and the US produced coordinated reports after the investigation was complete.
“I think all the UK authorities would ask is that the various regulatory bodies that are investigating the particular case try to work together and refrain from making too many public statements until the investigation is completed,” King said.
King said he did not share the view held by some that the move in New York was part of a concerted US effort to undermine London as a financial center, following the Barclays probe and a US Senate panel report that criticized HSBC Holdings’ efforts to police suspect transactions.
One British lawmaker, however, said the affair was part of a “political onslaught” in the US against British banks.
“I think it’s a concerted effort that’s been organized at the top of the US government. I think this is Washington trying to win a commercial battle to have trading from London shifted to New York,” said John Mann, a member of parliament’s finance committee, who also called for a parliamentary inquiry.
Standard Chartered lost over a quarter of its market value in 24 hours after Lawsky, the head of New York State’s Department of Financial Services, threatened on Monday to cancel Standard Chartered’s state banking license, which is critical for dealing in dollars. Lawsky called Standard Chartered a “rogue institution” for breaking US sanctions against Iran.
Standard Chartered shares bounced 7.1 percent on Wednesday to close in London at £13.15, up from a three-year low of £10.92 hit on Tuesday. They were still down 18 percent since the regulator’s threat, which chief executive Peters Sands said was “disproportionate” and came as a “complete surprise.”
The bank’s top executives, some like Sands scrambling back from summer vacations, worked on a defense strategy. So far, the executives have contested the regulator’s figures and his interpretation of the law, but they have given little further detail. The bank says only a tiny proportion of its Iran-related deals — less than US$14 million — was questionable under US sanctions rules.
Sands, in his first public comments since the crisis arose, offered no major new information on the allegations, which the bank has been reviewing with authorities for the past two years.
“[We] fundamentally reject the overall picture and believe there are no grounds for them to take this action,” he told reporters.
The threat to cancel the bank’s license to operate in New York would be “wholly disproportionate,” he said.
Also on Wednesday, Deloitte LLP, which was accused in Lawsky’s order of wrongdoing in its role as an outside consultant to Standard Chartered, denied any misconduct. Deloitte was hired by Standard Chartered after US authorities reprimanded the bank for similar lapses on transactions in 2004.
“Deloitte had no knowledge of any alleged misconduct by any Standard Chartered Bank employees and categorically denies that it aided in any way any violation of law by the bank,” the firm said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained