Roberta Holland

After months of negotiations, European Parliament is poised to move forward this week with a single banking supervisor to oversee the Eurozone’s biggest banks. Known as the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), the initiative consists of the establishment of a single banking supervisory authority to oversee the 150 largest banks in the eurozone. The new authority […]

Companies convicted of market abuse could face fines up to 15 percent of their annual turnover, under tough new penalties for financial manipulation approved by European Parliament this week. The market abuse directive applies to manipulating financial markets, insider dealing, and abuse of inside information. Companies now will face fines of at least 15 percent […]

France’s planned pension reform is getting a failing grade from critics who say the government is not going far enough to balance its pension system. French administration officials unveiled the pension reform plan at the end of last month. The length of employee contributions will be increased incrementally by one trimester each year beginning in […]

The European Commission this week released the first prong of its enhanced regulatory approach toward the so-called shadow banking sector with proposed new rules for money market funds. Shadow banking – which the commission defines as the system of credit intermediation that involves entities and activities outside regular banking – is less regulated than the […]

The international Financial Stability Board has signaled that more than banks can pose systemic market threats, with its decision last month to expand its “too big to fail” rules to nine global insurers. Now the organization may include more types of institutions, according to an official with the FSB. Eva Hupkes, adviser on regulatory policy […]

The German offices of Rheinmetall AG and Atlas Elektronik were raided last week as part of an investigation into allegations their employees bribed Greek officials to win contracts, according to published reports. Unnamed employees of the companies are being investigated for alleged payments to Greek officials in order to win submarine equipment contracts between 1998 […]

Roughly two-thirds of U.K. financial services firms have raised salaries to offset potential impact of the EU bonus cap, according to a survey released this week by Robert Half Financial Services. The Robert Half survey, which polled 100 chief financial officers and chief operating officers from U.K. financial services firms, revealed that roughly 93 percent […]

European Union lawmakers are taking advantage of their powers in the telecoms arena, blocking a proposed regulation in Portugal and questioning proposed regulations in Germany and Italy. Earlier this month, the European Commission blocked a Portuguese regulation concerning the fixed termination market.   Also in August the commission asked the German telecom regulator, BNetzA, to scrap […]

An International Financial Reporting Standards committee last week rebuffed lobbying efforts to relax employee benefits accounting rules regarding the discount rate used to value pension liabilities. The IFRS Interpretations Committee decided in its July meeting not to add the item to its agenda, explaining that the issue “would be too broad for it to address […]

French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi has joined the list of Western health care companies under scrutiny by Chinese officials for bribery or other financial crimes. The 21st Century Business Herald, a state-owned newspaper based in Guangzhou, published a report last week detailing a whistleblower’s account that Sanofi paid bribes to 503 doctors worth 1.69 million yuan […]