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☆ Amazon, Meta, and other tech giants are cutting middle management to be more efficient. It's a risky move that could backfire.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Big Tech's latest cost cutting move is "flattening," or removing middle management from the org chart. This is likely to work in the short term, but removing middle management has long-term consequences. The move comes as the Big Tech companies reel from the consequences of overhiring, as the pandemic turned into an unexpected boon to their businesses. While that all sounds good, experts warn removing middle management roles have other consequences that Big Tech will have to deal with. Middle managers set the tone and cultureAdditionally, middle managers have more influence on shaping a company's culture and can affect whether or not employees feel engaged in their jobs, as Insider's Aki Ito reported.

☆ IMF's Georgieva sees global growth below 3% in 2023, says robust recovery remains 'elusive'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Andrea Shalal | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

That is the global lender's lowest medium-term growth forecast since 1990, and well below the average growth of 3.8% seen in the past two decades. Georgieva said strong and coordinated monetary and fiscal policy actions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine had prevented a much worse outcome in recent years, but growth prospects remained weak in both the near- and medium-term given persistently high inflation. "With rising geopolitical tensions and still-high inflation, a robust recovery remains elusive. She said India and China would account for half of global growth in 2023, but about 90% of advanced economies would see a decline in their growth rate this year. Recent bank failures in Switzerland and the United States had exposed risk management failures at specific banks and supervisory lapses.

Some senior dealmakers at China's third-largest brokerage by market value will see an even steeper cut of two-thirds to their 2022 bonuses, said one of the people. The trend has accelerated as employers cut pay and perks in response to the government's "common prosperity" rhetoric. MILDER CUTSA senior investment banker in China could earn three million to 10 million yuan ($445,000 to $1.48 million) a year in total remuneration, excluding stock incentives, industry sources have said. By way of comparison, Wall Street bonuses fell 26% last year to average $176,700, versus a record 2021, showed a report last month from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Besides remuneration cuts, some investment banks have asked staff to avoid displays of wealth such as by uploading photographs to social media of expensive meals or overseas trips, industry sources said.

☆ Goldman Sachs fined $3 mln by FINRA over mismarking short sale orders
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

From October 2015 to April 2018, Goldman mismarked around 60 million short sale orders totaling more than 14 billion shares as "long" sales, with nearly eight million of those orders, totaling more than a billion shares, being executed, FINRA said. Because they were inaccurately marked as "long," 12,335 of the executed orders were executed at or below the best displayed price available while a short sale circuit breaker was in effect, FINRA said. Short sale circuit breakers prohibit the execution or display of a short sale in that security at a price that is less than or equal to the current national best bid. The mismarked orders also caused Goldman to submit inaccurate trade reports to FINRA and maintain inaccurate books and records, the regulator said. Goldman also failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to achieve compliance with short sale regulations SHO and rules relating to accurate trade reporting, FINRA said.

☆ Swiss regulator deflects blame for Credit Suisse debacle
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( John O'Donnell | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

BERN, April 5 (Reuters) - Switzerland's financial regulator deflected blame for the collapse of the country's second-biggest bank, Credit Suisse, saying it had been quick to respond, calling instead for more powers to take lenders to task. Axel Lehman had told shareholders he was 'truly sorry" for taking Swiss bank to the brink of bankruptcy. "Our instruments hit their limits ... as seen in the case of Credit Suisse," said Amstad, making a rare public appeal for more power. But, as we have seen, Credit Suisse paid billions in fines and that didn't change its catastrophic business strategy," said Dominik Gross of the Swiss Alliance of Development Organisations. While the takeover of Credit Suisse has been agreed, many hurdles, such as winning regulatory approval from countries around the world, lie ahead.

☆ Switzerland faced a full-scale bank run if Credit Suisse went bankrupt, Swiss regulator argues
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Ruxandra Iordache | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

It would have erased the holding company Credit Suisse Group, along with the parent bank Credit Suisse AG and its branches, while retaining the Credit Suisse (Schewiz) AG entity because of its "systemic importance." "The parent bank Credit Suisse AG would have gone under – a Swiss bank with total assets of over CHF 350 billion and ongoing business also running into many billions," Angehrn warned. Many other Swiss banks would probably have faced a run on deposits, as Credit Suisse itself did in the fourth quarter of 2022." Angehrn said the regulator has been in recent dialogue with the U.S., but did not experience international pressure in its supervision of Credit Suisse. The authorities would have risked not stopping a looming financial crisis by using the tool of resolution, but rather triggering such a financial crisis."

☆ EU's new crypto asset rules don't go far enough - ECB's McCaul
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

FRANKFURT, April 5 (Reuters) - The European Union's proposed regulations for crypto assets do not go far enough, and safeguards need to be strengthened to capture risks adequately, European Central Bank supervisory board member Elizabeth McCaul said on Wednesday. The European Parliament is set to vote on the Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) bill later this month, taking a big step in providing oversight of the crypto world after a series of scandals and collapses. "While the new Basel standard and MiCA are important milestones, I am afraid they will not be sufficient on their own," McCaul said in a blog post. Another issues is how the size of crypto-asset service providers is measured because the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX would not have counted as significant given how the firm was organised. The same goes for conflicts of interest, which must be identified across the group and at affiliated entities, McCaul said.

☆ Factbox: JPMorgan's Dimon comments on banking crisis and AI in annual letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

April 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. banking crisis is ongoing and will have effects for years to come, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday. Here are some snippets from the letter:ON BANKING CRISIS* "Regarding the current disruption in the U.S. banking system, most of the risks were hiding in plain sight." * "While this crisis will pass, lessons will be learned, which will result in some changes to the regulatory system. * "The debate should not always be about more or less regulation but about what mix of regulations will keep America's banking system the best in the world." * "Regulatory arbitrage is already forcing many activities, from certain types of lending to certain types of trading, outside the banking system."

☆ EY banned from auditing public interest companies in Germany over Wirecard
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Olesya Dmitracova | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN —Big-4 accounting firm EY has been banned from auditing companies of public interest in Germany for two years over its failures as the auditor of Wirecard in the years before the digital payments company’s staggering collapse. Germany’s auditor supervisory authority APAS said Monday that it had imposed sanctions on the auditor of Wirecard over “breaches of professional duty” between 2016 and 2018, without naming EY. EY had audited Wirecard for more than a decade before refusing to sign off on its final results for 2019, precipitating the company’s downfall. The supervisory body also fined the Wirecard auditor €500,000 ($544,000) and issued smaller fines — between €23,000 ($25,000) and €300,000 ($326,000) — to five individual auditors at the firm. In the end, Wirecard admitted that roughly a quarter of its assets — €1.9 billion ($2.1 billion) in cash — probably never existed.

☆ Shares and bonds ride high after soothing euro zone data
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Marc Jones | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Government bonds have gained as much as 5%, gold is 8% higher, while oil is down and the dollar has barely budged. The euro zone inflation numbers showed consumer prices rising 6.9% in March after an 8.5% increase in February, representing the sharpest deceleration since Eurostat started collecting data in 1991. Japan's Nikkei (.N225) also jumped 1% on Friday，as inflation data for the capital Tokyo highlighted broadening price pressures. The euro , which hit a one-week high against the dollar overnight on sticky German inflation data, dipped back under $1.09 again after the euro zone data but was still set for a 3% monthly rise. U.S. crude futures were flat at $74.40 per barrel, while Brent crude futures slipped 0.1% to $78.52 per barrel.

☆ Asian shares ride high in Q1 but keep vigil on inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stella Qiu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The buoyant mood is likely to run into resistance in Europe, with caution setting in ahead of the euro zone inflation data. The pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures was flat, while S&P 500 futures eked out a gain of 0.2%. It is on course for a quarterly gain of 3.6%, after surging 12% in the three months that ended in December. Japan's Nikkei (.N225) also leaped 1%，as inflation data for the capital Tokyo highlighted broadening price pressures. That compared with an overwhelming bet on a 25 basis point hike a month ago before the banking volatility started.

☆ Asian shares ride high in Q1 but steel for U.S. inflation data
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stella Qiu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Japan's Nikkei (.N225) also gained 1%，as inflation data for the capital city Tokyo highlighted broadening price pressures. A slower than expected decline in German inflation has raised the stakes for U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, tracked by the Federal Reserve for monetary policy, later in the day. Economists are expecting the PCE index to ease to 0.4% in February from January when it rose 0.6%. "With central banks still mindful of inflation risks, interest rates will stay at their peaks for several months. That compared with an overwhelming bet on a 25 basis point hike a month ago before the banking volatility started.

☆ San Francisco Fed leader Daly likely not a major player in SVB saga, officials say
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Steve Liesman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

"She was not in the chain of command," one former Fed bank president told CNBC. "Supervisory action taken by the San Francisco Fed staff would have been cleared by Washington." Daly and Fed board officials declined to comment for this report. San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly reacts at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council Town Hall, Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 15, 2019. A review of what went wrong will likely point more heavily to Washington, its supervisory bureaucracy and the board leadership than to San Francisco.

☆ China to boost regulatory oversight of digital economy -c.bank deputy governor
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BOAO, China, March 31 (Reuters) - China will beef up its regulatory oversight of the digital economy, as new technologies, especially new forms of finance, should not be blindly accepted and recognised, a deputy governor of China's central bank said on Friday. Digital currencies and newly invented cryptocurrencies, rather than solving problems in finance, can in fact create new challenges, Xuan Changneng, a deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said at the annual Boao Forum in Hainan province. He did not spell out steps that will be taken to boost oversight. China itself has launched its own digital renminbi, or yuan, but it is little used. The National Financial Regulatory Administration will absorb the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission's responsibilities and take over some supervisory functions from the central bank and the securities regulator.

NOVEMBER 2021Examiners issue six citations -- "matters requiring attention" (MRA) and "matters requiring immediate attention" (MRIA) -- related to the bank's liquidity stress testing, contingency funding, and liquidity risk management. SVB's tests, supervisors find, are not "stressful enough; they were not realistic... it conducted those tests and the guidance back from the supervisors was that the tests were inadequate," Barr told Congress. "The supervisors told the board of directors and the bank that the board oversight with respect to risk management was deficient," Barr said this week. Fed supervisors begin a "horizontal review" of several banks, including SVB, for interest-rate risk. FEB 2023Fed staff give a presentation to Barr and other Board members about interest rate risk generally and at Silicon Valley Bank in particular.

☆ Senate Democrats led by Elizabeth Warren press federal bank regulators to implement stronger capital requirements
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are pressing federal banking regulators to toughen bank capital requirements following back-to-back congressional hearings where officials testified about the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. "We write to urge you follow through with establishing strong capital requirements that protect consumers and taxpayers, and preserve the safety and soundness of our banking system," Warren, along with Sens. Under the "stress capital buffer" implemented at the time, the capital requirements for banking firms is determined annually according to supervisory stress tests. The lawmakers urged regulators to enforce strong capital requirements to fend off aggressive lobbying from Wall Street and safeguard against more bank failures. "In order to prevent future bank crises and protect working Americans, I urge your agencies to quickly implement strong capital requirements and resist industry pressure to weaken or delay these requirements."

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The secretive world of Federal Reserve bank supervision has been laid bare by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and critics say it needs an overhaul to make it more nimble, transparent and decisive. Typically, bank supervisors do most of their work behind closed doors. Bank supervision is typically conducted behind closed-doors because of concerns that publicizing bank missteps could spur bank runs and undermine confidence in the overall system. SVB's rapid growth also was a factor for Fed supervisors. Barr said part of his review would look at whether Fed supervision was appropriate for the bank's "rapid growth and vulnerabilities."

☆ Global derivatives industry defends CDS after banking blow-ups
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Marc Jones | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Credit default swaps (CDS) are derivatives that offer insurance against the risk of a bond issuer - such as a bank - not paying their creditors. European Union markets watchdog ESMA said on Thursday that it, together national regulators, had been "looking into the recent market movements, including in the CDS market". Clearing of individual bank or company CDS is also available at LCH’s CDSClear and ICE Clear Credit. Overall, the credit derivatives market is also far smaller than it was before the 2008 crisis. "The credit derivatives market continues to play a critical role, particularly during times of volatility," Malia said.

☆ Premarket stocks: Banking chaos has been bittersweet for crypto and wine
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

But it also gave the fine wine and crypto industry a big boost as panicking investors rushed out of the financial sector and into alternative assets. Bittersweet banking: SVB lent over $4 billion to winery clients since 1994, with over 400 wine industry clients (including wineries, vineyards and vendors) working with the bank’s premium wine division, according to the bank’s website. Recent SEC filings, meanwhile, indicated SVB had about $1.2 billion in outstanding loans to high-end wine clients when the bank collapsed. Circle, the company behind popular stablecoin USDC, said it had about $3.3 billion of its $40 billion in reserves at SVB. The collapse of Signature Bank, a major crypto lender, also had serious implications for the industry.

☆ Yellen says US bank rules may be too loose, need to be re-examined
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( David Lawder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

REUTERS/Mary F. CalvertWASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that banking regulation and supervisory rules need to be re-examined in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB.O) and Signature Bank (SBNY.O) failures to ensure current banking system risks are addressed. Yellen said a 2018 roll-back of bank capital requirements and stronger supervision for smaller and mid-size banks with assets below $250 billion should be re-examined. She added that regulatory reforms put in place after the 2008 financial crisis have helped the U.S. financial system weather shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic. adding that the financial system was significantly stronger than it was 15 years ago. The multi-regulator Financial Stability Oversight Council's restored Hedge Fund Working Group will continue to monitor risks and develop policy recommendations, Yellen said.

House lawmakers tore into top U.S. bank regulators Wednesday, questioning their competency and saying examiners were asleep at the wheel, at a second day of congressional hearings this week about how Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed practically overnight on March 10 and March 12. "We need competent financial supervisors, but Congress can't legislate competence," House Financial Services chairman Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told top officials at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and FDIC at the beginning the hearing. "The light touch cautions from the Fed to SVB management are clearly not what Congress intended for bank supervision," said Waters. Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, Mich., demanded raw, confidential supervisory information about the banks, available to regulators ahead of the collapses. Members of the Republican majority House challenged many of the decisions made by regulators in the hours and days after SVB collapsed and Signature Bank followed 48 hours later.

☆ US stocks fall as rising bond yields pressure tech amid easing banking sector fears
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

US stocks fall Tuesday, leaving the S&P 500 lower after three days of gains. The 2-year Treasury yield pushed back above 4%, pressuring tech stocks. Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about — delivered daily to your inbox. Tech stocks were stung by a rise in the 2-year Treasury yield, pushing above 4% for the first time in nearly a week. Higher yields slice into the value of future profit for tech and other growth companies.

☆ Explainer: What are credit default swaps and why are they causing trouble for Europe's banks?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Amanda Cooper | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Turbulence in Europe's banks following the implosion of 167-year-old Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) and runs on regional banks in the U.S. has focused attention on the role played by credit default swaps in all the turmoil. The moves followed a surge in the cost of insuring Deutsche Bank's debt against default via credit default swaps (CDS) to a more than four-year high last week. Credit default swaps are derivatives that offer insurance against the risk of a bond issuer - such as a company, a bank or a sovereign government - not paying their creditors. The CDS market is worth around $3.8 trillion, according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. The CDS market is small relative to equities, foreign exchange or the global bond markets, where there are more than $120 trillion bonds outstanding.

☆ Fed's Barr says first learned of risks at SVB weeks before it failed
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

March 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's head of banking supervision said Tuesday he was first made aware of the interest rate risk-related issues at Silicon Valley Bank in mid-February, just weeks before its failure. "The staff highlighted the interest-rate risk that was present at Silicon Valley Bank and indicated that they were in the middle of a further review," Barr said. "I believe that is the first time that I was told about interest-rate risk at Silicon Valley Bank." In mid-2022, Fed staff deemed the bank's management to be deficient and barred the bank from growing through mergers or acquisitions, Barr said. "To the best of my knowledge I first learned about the issues at Silicon Valley Bank with respect to interest rate risk in mid-February of 2023," Barr said.

☆ SVB sale puts too-big-to-fail risk in a new bottle
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( John Foley | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The sale of SVB to rival First Citizens Bancshares (FCNCA.O) addresses the first part, and doubles down on the second. First Citizens snapped up $110 billion of SVB’s assets over the weekend, at a generous $16.5 billion discount to book value. And for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which is handling SVB’s sale, First Citizens chief Frank Holding is a known quantity. In SVB’s case, the FDIC has agreed to absorb some potential losses in the failed bank’s loan book. The FDIC expects its fund for managing failed banks will take a $20 billion hit.

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