Compliance & Ethics

America’s largest apartment manager is being forced to clean up how it markets rent to prospective tenants. Greystar has agreed to pay $24 million and end what regulators call a pattern of hiding unavoidable monthly fees behind deceptively low rent ads. The resolution follows a joint lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Colorado, which accused the real estate giant of luring renters in with prices that didn’t reflect what they would actually pay to live in its properties.

After years of warnings that corruption too easily slips through cracks between national legal systems, EU lawmakers have reached a political deal to tighten the net. On Tuesday night, negotiators from the European Parliament and Council agreed on the Union’s first directive to harmonise criminal laws against corruption, a milestone many in Brussels say is overdue.

Europe wants deeper capital markets, more private investment, and a financial system that can compete globally. But one of the bloc’s leading regulators is warning that the EU is trying to build that future on an outdated supervisory map.

Australia’s financial watchdog is tightening expectations for industry codes of conduct, making clear that if banks, insurers, lenders, or investment firms want to claim their codes are “ASIC-approved,” they’ll need to prove those codes actually work for consumers.

Google has been ordered by Australia’s Federal Court to pay $36.3 million (AUD $55 million) after admitting that revenue-sharing deals with Telstra and Optus unfairly restricted competition in the mobile search market.

Apple has officially landed two more of its services on the EU’s regulatory radar. On Thursday, the European Commission confirmed that the tech giant notified Brussels that both Apple Ads and Apple Maps meet the size and scale thresholds set under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Europe’s sweeping effort to rein in the dominance of major digital players.

Europe’s top administrative watchdog has issued a reminder to the European Commission that urgency is no justification for abandoning its own standards. In a recent decision, European Ombudswoman Teresa Anjinho concluded that the Commission strayed from its Better Regulation framework while rushing forward proposals on sustainability due diligence, migrant smuggling, and agricultural policy. Those rules exist to safeguard transparency, evidence, and public participation in EU lawmaking, even when timelines tighten.