Managers of Wealth Asia Pacific

European Commission Grants 18 Months Equivalence to UK CCPs

The European Commission says the decision will give financial market participants time to reduce their “excessive” exposures to UK-based CCPs.

Japanese bank makes major voting blunder

The company uses a tallying system dubbed forward processing, in which a postal office will issue a "certificate of delivery" on the date that votes are delivered, with JaSt tallying votes with respect to the date indicated on the certificate.

How the FinCen Papers provide an opportunity to improve the Suspicious Activity Report (SARs) regime

Buzzfeed has had these SARs for over a year.

MAS ‘Closely Studying’ Singapore Mentions in FinCEN Files

The SARs flagged bank clients in more than 170 countries who were identified as being involved in potentially illicit transactions.

CBA, Macquarie face new $167m dirty cash allegations

Commonwealth Bank ended up copping a $700 million penalty as a result.

ASIC Tells Fund Managers To Be True To Label

ASIC examined the appropriateness of the product labels used by the 37 managed funds and assessed whether the funds were described and promoted in a manner that reflects the underlying assets in terms of risk and liquidity.

ASIC cleans up 'cash plus' funds

ASIC found 14 'cash' funds with $7 billion in assets had confusing or inappropriate labelling, resulting in changes to names, asset allocations or in one case, even a closure.

Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Re-launches the 5-year Malaysian Government Securities Futures Contract

“Bursa Malaysia will continue to collaborate with the FMC, SC and Bank Negara Malaysia in market development initiatives to elevate and enhance liquidity and accessibility in the Malaysian financial market,”

HSBC exposed in $80m Hong Kong Ponzi scandal

The bank was forced to pay a record $1.9 billion in December 2012 to settle the allegations that it had knowingly allowed for the transactions to go ahead.

Westpac Group sells Strategic Alliances (“Vendor Finance”) business

Completion of the transaction is expected to occur at the end of April 2021.

HSBC HK shares plummet after reported illicit activity

The revelations underscore challenges for regulatory and financial institutions trying to stop the flow of dirty money despite billions of dollars of investments and penalties imposed on banks in the past decade.

ASIC enforcement update January to June 2020

During this period, ASIC has successfully completed enforcement action in two long-running matters, Octaviar and Storm Financial, both of which related to directors’ duties obligations in Australia and resulted in civil penalties and disqualificatio

HK regulator imposes $4.2m fine on The Bank of East Asia for regulatory breaches

Following a referral from the HKMA and a self-report by BEA

Index manager, friend charged for insider trading

The SEC's complaint alleges, for example, that a number of purchase orders were entered in Chen's brokerage account immediately following logins from IP addresses assigned to Yang's home address.

Australian Banks Flagged in SARs from FinCEN Files

The SARs contained in the FinCEN Files flagged bank clients in more than 170 countries who were identified as being involved in more than USD 2 trillion in potentially illicit transactions. Among the potentially suspicious transactions were more than USD

Asset managers set to launch China’s first Star 50 Index ETFs

The funds will track the top 50 companies on Shanghai’s answer to Nasdaq

SFC Revises AML/CFT Guidelines for Securities Sector

The amendments set out the sources of information which licensed corporations should consider in their institutional risk assessments, and include guidance on the range of risk factors that should be taken into account when conducting such assessments.

Legal, Regulation & Compliance