The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said this week that firms have made meaningful progress in strengthening sanctions controls since February 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered an unprecedented expansion of sanctions requirements and compliance expectations across the financial sector.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's battle with state regulators over prediction markets has reached Rhode Island, the latest front in what is becoming one of the most consequential jurisdictional disputes in modern financial regulation. The CFTC moved to intervene in litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, seeking to stop the state from applying its gambling laws against a CFTC-registered designated contract market.
One of the details buried in Sweden’s enforcement notice against Norion Bank is that the regulator specifically examined customers that were legal entities, not just individuals or companies. That distinction tends to matter. Corporate structures are where anti-money laundering programs become less about identity verification and more about whether a bank actually understands who is sitting behind the paperwork.
Finland's FCCA recently proposed roughly €9.4 million in penalty payments against companies tied to what it described as a long-running purchasing and information-exchange cartel in Finland’s wild berry sector. The alleged conduct stretched from 2013 through 2023 and involved five of the industry’s largest companies: Arctic International, Kaskein Marja, Kiantama, Marja Bothnia Berries, and Polarica.
Italy’s competition watchdog said this week it has opened a probe into Biogen and its Italian subsidiary over allegations the company used control of a critical screening test to box out a lower-cost rival in the market for multiple sclerosis drugs containing natalizumab. The accusation is technical. The implications are not.
This week, the Federal Court of Australia ordered Westpac Banking Corporation to pay a $18.6 million (AUD $26 million) civil penalty after the bank admitted it failed to properly respond to more than 200 hardship notices between 2017 and 2023. The requests came through Westpac and its subsidiary brands, including St George Bank and Bank of Melbourne, and involved customers struggling to keep up with repayments on home loans, credit cards, personal loans, and car loans.
Hong Kong’s market regulator laid out a blunt assessment of what it found while reviewing the account opening practices of 12 securities brokers. Some firms accepted questionable or forged documents during onboarding. Some performed inadequate due diligence on account opening materials. Others showed weaknesses in the way they handled cross-border correspondent relationships with overseas intermediaries. The regulator’s language became noticeably sharper when discussing the misuse of investment accounts for suspicious or illicit transactions and the corresponding rise in money laundering and terrorist financing risks.