Financial Times (December 23)
In a “win for activists that signals trouble for other US companies,” the SEC “has rejected Apple’s petition to block three shareholder proposals from going to a vote at its next annual meeting…. Last month, the regulator changed its policies to make it harder for companies to win regulatory support to reject investor petitions.”
Tags: Activists, AGM, Apple, Investor, Petition, Petitions, Policies, Regulator, Reject, SEC, Shareholder proposals, Signals, Trouble, Vote, Win
The Economist (April 28)
“There is no consensus on what a crypto-asset is. Even within countries, authorities disagree on how to classify them. Are they a commodity, a currency, a security or their own, peculiar asset class?” The Swiss regulator, FINMA, took what may become a popular approach. FINMA’s treatment of crypto-assets will be based “on their actual function—ie, whether they are used for payments; as a utility token that gives its holder access to a specific service; or as an investment. This also means a token’s classification can change over time.”
Tags: Asset class, Authorities, Commodity, Consensus, Crypto-asset, Currency, FINMA, Regulator, Security, Switzerland, Treatment
Bloomberg (October 14)
“Ernst & Young LLP took Bernie Madoff at his word when it signed off on audits of a fund that helped feed the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. The firm must now defend that decision at the first trial of an auditor over losses tied to Madoff, who’s serving a 150-year prison term for stealing billions of dollars from thousands of investors.” The case will be tried by jury in a state court in Seattle and comes just after “the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the lead U.S. audit regulator, warns that one in three audit opinions in the U.S. lack appropriate supporting evidence.”
Tags: Audits, Bernie Madoff, Ernst & Young, Evidence, Investors, PCAOB, Ponzi scheme, Prison, Regulator, Seattle, Trial, U.S.
New York Times (March 27)
The European regulator should follow the lead of the Federal Aviation Administration and require two people in the cockpit at all times. “No safety policy will ever anticipate every situation. But requiring two people to be in the cockpit during flight is a sensible step to reduce the risk that comes with leaving the lives of dozens or hundreds of people in the hands of just one pilot.”
Euromoney (April Issue)
“There is a strong feeling abroad that Europe is making good progress on the road to banking union, with a credible regulator in the European Central Bank soon subjecting banks to uniform regulation and chipping away at some of the fudges on asset quality that national regulators have previously winked at.”
Tags: Asset quality, Banking union, Banks, ECB, Europe, Feeling, Progress, Regulation, Regulator