The Standard Chartered Debacle; How Not To Go After A Big Bank?

There’s a big bad bank in London doing all sorts of bad things with a member of the Axis of Evil.

That’s what the head of the New York State Department of Financial Services is alleging and he’s done so by releasing some pretty ugly details about the bank, Standard Chartered. Unfortunately for Benjamin Lawsky, head of the NYSDFS, he’s become a bigger story than the actual allegations.

Why? Lawsky went after Standard Chartered without the assistance of fellow regulators like the Department of Justice, U.S. Treasury and New York Federal Reserve Bank. All of which had their own ongoing investigations related to Standard Chartered’s alleged $250 billion money laundering transactions tied to Iran. But Lawsky moved forward with his allegations without giving the others much of a heads up.

The move has some calling Lawksy a rogue regulator.

Lawsky’s allegations against the London bank make his solo attempt that much more delicate. Typically regulators act together when they go after financial institutions–especially when they’re investigating such serious issues like money laundering.

Think Barclays and Libor. In that record $450 million settlement regulators from both the U.S. and the U.K. worked together and included the Financial Services Authority, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission  and the United States Department of Justice.

Serious allegations like the ones Lawsky is throwing at Standard Chartered need to be handled with care. If Standard Chartered broke the rules the way Lawsky and his group say it did then there should have been greater fire power behind them. (You know, like the number one federal criminal investigation and enforcement agency, the DoJ.)

Instead, Lawksy went it alone and it’s starting to work against him. The New York State Department of Financial Services is a new regulator created just last year, and its first major action could be viewed as a way to make a name for itself.

What’s worse is that its fellow U.S. regulators are apparently angry with Lawsky for going rogue. Treasury and the Federal reserve were blindsided and angered by Lawsky’s move, Reuters reports. Signs of frustration are also being shown among British members of parliament who think the U.S. is unfairly targeting London’s banks.

Of course, if Standard Chartered engaged in illegal behavior (it denies the extent of the NYDFS’s claims) then none of that should matter. The problem is that the story is now becoming much more focused on all these political and regulatory riffs rather than the alleged massive wrong-doing by the British bank.

By Halah Touryalai, Forbes Staff
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Anarchy in the financial markets!

 If regulators don't fix the lawlessness in international financial markets, future losses might us all in

THE lawlessness that pervades the international banking industry and especially the large Western banks must raise serious questions as to what perpetuates such barbarous behaviour among the custodians of people's money.

A big part of it is that the banking industry operates on greed rewarding its key employees via commissions for businesses brought in, deals made, and products sold even if they were dubious in the first place.

This encourages among the industry a bunch of highly dishonest salesman who shield themselves behind a veil of professionalism to dupe and seduce customers into believing their products are good and their processes are strong, secure and fair.

And they are aided by ineffectual regulators who parrot the trite phrase that free markets should not be overly regulated but turn a blind eye when the biggest financial institutions amass massive positions to fix markets and deceive customers, making a mockery of market freedom.

The Angel of Independence monument stands in front of HSBC’s headquarters in Mexico City. Europe’s biggest bank has been found laundering billion of dollars for drug cartels, terrorists and socalled pariah states, in a scandal which almost overshadows the Barclays’ one. — Reuters

The integrity of free markets was compromised because big players could affect the direction of markets, making the markets way less than perfect. Free markets basically became unfettered freedom to make money even at the expense of the market and the potential collapse of the world's financial system.

They did it yet again or to be more accurate they did it earlier but their misdeeds surfaced once more recently. UK's Barclay's bank made a US$453mil settlement with regulatory authorities in the United Kingdom and the United States for fixing the London interbank offered rate (Libor).

Now, it turns out that Barclay's may not be the only one. According to a Reuter's report, other major banks are likely to be involved and may try and go for a group settlement with regulators, the US' Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the UK's Financial Services Authority.

The banks being investigated include top names such as Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase. They all declined to comment to Reuters.

And one of these banks, Europe's biggest HSBC, has been found laundering billion of dollars for drug cartels, terrorists and so-called pariah states, in a scandal which almost overshadows the Barclays' one. That leads to the question of whether other banks were involved as well.

If they jointly fixed the Libor, the world's most used reference rate for borrowings and derivatives with an estimated US$550 trillion, yes trillion, of assets and derivatives tied to the rate, it will be a scandal of epic proportions and may result in settlements of an estimated US$20bil-US$40bil.

That settlement will only scratch the surface. Just 0.1% of US$550 trillion is US$550bil. That implies that if banks had been able to fraudulently fix Libor so that it was just 0.1 percentage points higher, customers throughout the world would have had to pay US$550bil more in interest charges in a year.

In March this year, five US banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, made a landmark US$25bil settlement with the US government for foreclosure abuses.

Even so, only a small fraction of affected house buyers are expected to benefit from this. Many other banks, however, are relatively unaffected and have not been fully called to account for their role in the US subprime crisis, which could have caused a collapse of the world's financial system.

Banks which bundled together risky housing loans into credit derivative products and passed them off as those with higher credit rating than their individual ratings, aided by ratings agencies, got off scot free. No one was called to account.

That the financial system is still vulnerable and that all gaps have still not been closed is JP Morgan's recent loss of up to US$4bil from rogue trading by a London trader going by the name of The Whale.

There needs to be a new set of rules, regulations and behaviour one based on ethics, honesty, competency and checks and balances. Custodians of public money should be required to be above all else honest first and foremost.

They should be consummate professionals whose first duty should be to protect the deposits of customers and the bank's capital. They should not do anything which puts the bank at undue risk.

The insidious habit of rewarding those who bring in revenue with hefty commissions have to be stopped so that bankers do not take risks which put their banks at undue risk which will eventually require trillion of dollars in rescue from governments.

Regulators should again make clear demarcations between those financial institutions who are custodians of public money and those who are not and hold the former to much higher standards of accountability and integrity.

Shareholders of financial institutions who are custodians of public money should be led to expect a lower rate of return on their investments but they should also be led to expect a lower corresponding rate of risk befitting that of major institutions which are so vital for the proper functioning of the economy.

Enforcers should focus on bringing individuals responsible for these losses to book and throwing criminal charges at them which will put them behind bars for long periods of time, befitting their severity. Society at large tends to treat white-collar criminals with kid gloves.

When derivatives trading and deception brought major Wall Street firms such as Enron and WorldCom to their knees and eventual collapse in the early 2000s, enforcers brought to book key executives who are spending time behind bars.

But despite the near collapse of the world's financial system, despite fraudulent behaviour, despite misrepresentation and deception, despite selling structured products of dubious value and then promptly taking positions against them, despite fixing of reference interest rates, despite money laundering and despite many other crimes still to be unearthed, no one has been brought to account.

Fining institutions leaves those individuals responsible free. In fact, settlements made come with the agreement that there will be no prosecution of individual bank staff and gives major incentive for others to do the same.

They are safe in the belief that the institution will pay the price and they will go free in the event things turn wrong. Otherwise, they will end up millionaires and even billionaires. How convenient an arrangement!

There is anarchy in the financial markets and a state of lawlessness which encourages heists of unimaginable proportions without risk of punishment. If we don't watch it, the losses will do the world economy, and all of us, in.

A Question of Business
By P. GUNASEGARAM

> Independent consultant and writer P. Gunasegaram (t.p.guna@gmail.com) is amazed that people can get away with so much by just repeating two words: free markets.

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Four British banks to pay for scandal!

LONDON: Britain's four biggest banks have agreed to pay compensation to customers they misled about interest rate hedging products, following an investigation by Britain's financial regulator.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said yesterday it had reached an agreement with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS to provide appropriate compensation following an investigation into the misselling of the products.

The FSA said it found evidence of “serious failings” by the banks and added: “We believe that this has resulted in a severe impact on a large number of these businesses.”

The finding by the FSA of misselling could lead to compensation claims ranging from many millions to several billion pounds from small companies which bought them.

It is the latest in a string of misselling cases that have plagued the financial services industry for over two decades. Banks are already set to pay upwards of £9bil (US$13.96bil) in compensation to customers for misselling loan insurance.

The news will compound problems for a sector that was hit hard on Thursday by news of a record US$450mil fine levied on Barclays for rigging interest rates.

The FSA said the banks had agreed to compensate directly those customers that brought the most complex products.

The products range in complexity from caps that fix an upper limit to the interest rate on a loan, through to complex derivatives known as “structured collars” which fixed interest rates with a bank but introduced a degree of interest rate speculation.

The banks have agreed to stop marketing “structured collars” to retail customers.

The size of the likely compensation was not disclosed but Lloyds issued a separate statement saying it did not expect the financial impact from the settlement to be material. - Reuters