Neil Baker

When it comes to cracking down on insider trading and similar forms of market abuse, the European Union certainly talks tough. It has introduced high-level directives in recent years to create a pan-European approach to the law in this area. Enforcement on the ground, however, is patchy at best. Europe has a reputation for not […]

Sir Callum McCarthy, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, is firing back at critics who say the regulator’s famed principles-based, “soft-touch” approach to supervision may actually be a bit too soft. The FSA has been under fire since the failure of the Northern Rock bank earlier this year, which led to an internal investigation and […]

The Financial Services Authority has fined a British subsidiary of New York-based American International Group $1 million for failing to operate effective controls in its call centers. The regulator accompanied the fine with a warning to all insurance companies, telling them to make sure they keep on top of call center risks. The FSA said […]

The Financial Services Authority has stepped up its efforts to crack down on insider dealing and other kinds of market abuse in London trading. In recent months the regulator has increased the number of staff working in its insider dealing unit from 12 to 30 and said it wants to pursue more cases as criminal […]

Executive pay, long a lightning rod of investor disgust in the United States, has become a hot issue again in Europe. In Britain, the governor of the Bank of England recently faulted the high-pay culture in “the City” (London’s version of Wall Street), saying it played a role in causing the credit crisis. And in […]

British regulators are warning companies to do more to protect the security of customer data. The Financial Services Authority says financial firms must change their attitude toward data security, as too many customers are falling victim to identity fraud and other types of financial crime. And Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, who polices data protection laws, […]

Some day, the United States may adopt a regulatory system to cap greenhouse gas emissions and let companies trade credits to emit such pollution. Until then, advocates for corporate sustainability must look to Europe to get a sense of how such a cap-and-trade system might work. Since the European Union launched a cap-and-trade approach to […]

The European Union is contemplating more forceful action against companies that violate its antitrust laws, including collective legal actions—although officials there want to avoid what they call the “excesses” of U.S. class-action litigation. The European Commission itself has been taking a tougher line on enforcing Europe’s competition laws for the last year. Still, significant barriers […]

Credit Suisse has revealed that its investigation into the options mispricing that it disclosed last month has uncovered serious internal control failings. The Zurich-based bank announced a $2.85 billion write-off on wrongly priced trading positions in February, just a week after unveiling full-year results that made no mention of any problem. At the time it […]

European Union regulators have shown how tough they can be on companies that fail to comply with its decisions by hitting software giant Microsoft with a record $1.4 billion fine. The fine stems from Microsoft’s failure to meet its obligations under a 2004 ruling from the European Commission that required the company to make information […]