The UK’s financial watchdog has warned that many corporate finance firms may be falling short of anti-money laundering rules, following a new survey that revealed widespread weaknesses in financial crime controls across the sector.
The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has reprimanded and fined UBS $1 million (HK$8 million) after uncovering a 12-year stretch of compliance failures tied to the bank’s misclassification of professional investors in Hong Kong. The regulator cited “deficiencies in internal systems and controls” that led to the inaccurate classification of hundreds of client accounts and improper access to restricted financial products.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published its 2024 Report on Supervisory Convergence, signaling a quiet but meaningful shift in how the EU oversees its banking sector. After more than a decade of building the Single Rulebook, the focus is no longer on writing rules, it’s on making sure they work.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has released its second consolidated report on sanctions and measures imposed across the EU’s financial markets in 2024, and while the pace of enforcement held steady, the price of wrongdoing climbed steeply.
Ofcom has fined Royal Mail £21 million after the postal operator once again failed to meet its statutory delivery targets for First and Second Class mail during the 2024/25 financial year.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has secured $101 million in redress for UK and other non-U.S. investors in a fund sub-managed by BlueCrest Capital Management, concluding a years-long legal battle over the firm’s mishandling of conflicts of interest.
The European Commission has fined high-end fashion houses Gucci, Chloé, and Loewe a total of more than €157 million for restricting independent retailers’ ability to set their own prices, an anticompetitive practice known as resale price maintenance (RPM). The Commission said the pricing restrictions, which ran for years across the European Economic Area (EEA), raised prices and reduced consumer choice in the luxury fashion market.