Standard Chartered PLC said on Monday it was in talks with New York’s banking regulator to try to settle allegations it hid transactions with Iran.
The two sides have been negotiating ahead of a hearing set for today, at which the bank must demonstrate why its state banking license should not be revoked over the transactions.
Last week, the state’s Financial Services superintendent, Benjamin Lawsky, said the bank hid Iran-linked transactions with a total value of US$250 billion.
Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands has denied Lawsky’s allegations and said the total amount that failed to adhere to US sanctions on Iran was less than US$14 million.
A bank spokeswoman said negotiations were continuing, but she declined to give details.
“We’re still trying to reach a settlement,” the spokeswoman said.
New York’s Department of Financial Services declined to comment.
A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak about the matter, said that Lawsky was seeking a settlement of about US$350 million. Another person with knowledge of the situation said the figure had dropped to US$250 million.
In the past, New York bank regulators acted in concert with federal authorities and state prosecutors. Lloyds Banking Group paid US$350 million to state and federal authorities in 2009 to settle charges it altered records for clients from Iran and other countries. Credit Suisse AG settled similar charges for US$536 million the same year, Barclays PLC agreed to pay US$298 million in 2010 and in June ING Bank agreed to pay US$619 million.
Standard Chartered’s shares, which fell sharply last week after Lawsky’s announcement, rose 0.5 percent to £13.335 on hopes of a resolution.
“It looks like, rather than fight this in the courts, they’re looking to resolve this, hopefully ahead of Wednesday,” analyst Vivek Raja at Investec said.
The Department of Financial Services has released no details of how today’s hearing will be conducted and David Neustadt, a spokesman for Lawsky, declined to comment on whether the hearing would be open to the public.
The bank is awaiting information on whether executives will be required to attend, and Sands remained in Britain, a person close to the situation said who did not want to be named because of not being authorized to speak about the matter.
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