Wells Fargo’s Foreign Exchange Operations Under Investigation for Over-Charging: Sound Familiar?

Much has been written on Wells Fargo’s continuing compliance woes, including by this blog last year on its unauthorized retail account opening scandal. The most recent compliance issue involves the bank’s foreign exchange (forex) desk, where it is accused of overcharging mid-market corporate clients. To be sure, overcharging for forex transactions has resulted in multibillion dollar fines…

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Trump Administration Continues Moderate Deregulatory Approach to Financial Markets with OTC Derivatives Proposals

Early this month the Trump Administration published its second of a four-part series of recommendations on changing the regulation of the finance industry, weighing in on how to improve regulation of the capital markets. Last Thursday it published its third report, on the asset management and insurance industries. I found the first report on banking regulation, published…

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Government Removes AIG’s “Systemically Important” Label: Reading the Tea Leaves

On September 29, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) removed AIG’s designation as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI), relieving it of significant regulatory burdens, such as stress testing by the Fed and high capital requirements. FSOC is the chief regulator of systemic risk put in place by the Dodd-Frank Act. In its own words,…

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Implementing President Trump’s Dodd-Frank Directive May Lead to More Bailouts, Not Fewer, in the Next Crisis

Last Friday, February 3, nearly two weeks into his term, President Trump issued a directive to revamp financial market regulation, aimed squarely at the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 without naming it but also encompassing the financial regulatory framework as a whole. The directive presents a vague framework in the form of several “core principles” that dovetail…

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