GRC Report Staff

The UK Financial Reporting Council has opened three investigations tied to State Oil Limited (part of the Prax Group): one into an individual accountant's conduct on financing arrangements, and two into statutory audits by KPMG LLP and PKF Littlejohn LLP. The opening of an investigation does not imply any finding of breach or misconduct, but it signals continued FRC scrutiny of audit quality and of professional conduct around financing arrangements. Compliance teams should note the read-across for audit oversight, lender and borrower reporting, and finance function governance.

The CMA has issued an open letter reminding domestic heating oil suppliers that consumer contract terms must be fair and transparent, with particular focus on terms that remove or reduce supplier liability. The letter follows a CMA intervention over order cancellations during a price and demand surge tied to the Middle East conflict, which resulted in voluntary compensation for hundreds of customers. Compliance teams in any consumer-facing sector should treat it as a signal of enforcement priorities for contract terms during market volatility.

The AMF's SPOT campaign across five French portfolio management companies (SGPs) found weaknesses in telephone recording policies, retention periods, and deletion procedures. Voice ordering is declining (only 19% of surveyed SGPs use it), but the AMF says the channel carries heightened operational and compliance risk and still requires robust controls. Compliance teams should use the findings to benchmark their own recording frameworks, especially where MiFID II, AIFM, UCITS, and GDPR requirements overlap.

The source text contradicts itself on the direction of the rate move. It says "cut" in one place and "raise" in another, while the stated new rates (deposit facility 2.50%, main refinancing operations 2.65%, marginal lending facility 2.90%, effective September 16, 2026) and the inflation outlook point to an increase. Compliance teams should verify the direction against the official ECB release before acting, because rate-sensitive products, models, and disclosures depend on it.

Twice in the autumn of 2020, a distributor supplying networking equipment to Extreme Networks was asked for the website of its Russian customer. Twice, the distributor provided the website of a company that manufactured missiles for Russia's air defense systems. The purchase orders named someone else.

More than 1,200 customers were allowed to gamble through high-risk channels at The Star Entertainment Group's Australian casinos, where cash deposits could be accepted from third parties without recording who had supplied the money.

Google and Apple charged South Korean app developers a 26% commission even when those developers chose to use their own payment systems. The developers also had to bear the costs of building and operating those systems, while working without some of the features available through the companies' proprietary billing services.