Reiable sources report that several hundred billion swiss francs were flowing into Switzerland in the last six months. It is speculated that this is the result of sanctions against Russia after they went into the Ukraine.
Tall, fit, wel-spoken, well-dressed. So what’s new? Even female CEOs follow the old CEO model. Oscar Wilde quipped: Only shallow people do not udge by appearances.
Schumpeter writes in the Economist: In Gorilla society, power belongs to silverback males. These splendid creatures have numerous status markers besides their back hair: they are bigger than the rest of their band, strike space-filling postures, produce deeper sounds, thump their chests lustily and, in general, exude an air of physical fitness. Things are not that different in the corporate world. The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his age, a fit body. Bosses spread themselves out behind their large desks. They stand tall when talking to subordinates. Their conversation is laden with prestige pauses and declarative statements. CEO Appearance
Al Mansouri was the first female pilot of the UAE Air Force. She is 35 years old with an undergraduate degree in English, and was among the first women to joint the UAE Air Force Academy when membership became open to females, graduating in 2008.
Al Otaiba said U.S. tanker pilots were surprised when they heard a female voice during Monday’s mission and “actually paused for about 20 seconds.” While some countries in the region tended to be “a little more conservative,” Al Otaiba said the UAE took a more “open minded, pragmatic view” to the status of women, possibly due to their “open minded, young leadership.”
Al Mansouri was representative of the greater debate about the fight against ISIS, as it showed the choices people in the region could have for their culture, Al Otaiba explained.
“The whole campaign and coalition on ISIS, and extremists in general, boils down to ultimately this — Do you want a model or a society that allows women to become ministers in government, female fighter pilots, business executives, artists? Or, do you want a society where, if a woman doesn’t cover up in public, she’s beaten or she’s lashed or she’s raped? This is ultimately what this breaks down to,” he said.
The UAE was one of five Arab states that joined with the U.S. in Monday’s airstrikes. Al Otaiba predicted more Arab states would join the battle against ISIS.
“I don’t think it’s a question of which, or what, Arab countries will step up. We will. But, you can’t do this without us, and we can’t do this without you,” he said.
Al Otaiba said moderate Muslims needed to speak up about combating radical Islamists.
“I’ve heard a lot of comments. One of them was, there is no such thing as moderate Islam. There is no such thing as moderate Muslims. You know what? You’re looking at one,” he said. “We need to do more. We need to say more.”
Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming president of the European Commission, has brushed aside criticisms that his re-organisation of the Commission will compromise European healthcare.
Health technology and pharmaceutical policy is being moved from the Health and Food Safety Commissioner to the new Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. The European Public Health Alliance has not supported this decision which threatens Europe’s ability to prepare for major health crises such as outbreaks of infectious diseases and health threats arising from climate change, whilst putting the public interest behind the drive for profits in drug authorisation procedures.
The European Public Health Alliance believes that this move undermines the College of Commissioners and will deepen the rift between the institutions and ordinary people. We also deeply regret that the decision had not been subject to public debate, the lack of explanation provided for this policy shift, and that the announcement of portfolios came after the deadline for written questions in the Parliament. The unfortunate timing essentially inhibits the European Parliament’s right of scrutiny.
Health technology and pharmaceutical policy was transferred to the Health Commissioner in 2009 to, among other reasons (3), facilitate emergency preparedness (in response to the emergence of H1N1 and the alleged inability of DG Enterprise to provide the necessary leadership and coordination of vaccines) and to harmonise pharmaceutical governance along the lines of Europe’s Member States, all of whom manage pharmaceutical policy under their Ministries of Health.
“It is disappointing that President-elect Juncker believes these objectives fall a pale second place to appeasing big business,” said Peggy Maguire, President of EPHA. “It sends a terrible message during times when criticism is being levelled at Europe: the College of Commissioners should work for the interest of citizens and not anonymous corporate masters,” continued Ms Maguire.
With the responsibility for pharmaceutical and medical devices policies removed from the Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Dr Andriukaitis the nominated Commissioner has effectively been denied the opportunity to achieve what his services are being requested to do. Pharmaceutical policy is an integral part of public health policy making. Medicines form a major part of prevention and treatment measures and are therefore of key importance in safeguarding health. Access to safe, effective and high quality medicines (4), accompanied by independent and unbiased information to patients, is a minimum requirement for sustainable health systems. Previous experience with the Directive on information to the general public on medicinal products subject to medical prescription demonstrated the difficulty of providing information that must be reliable, comparable, objective and user-friendly when the main policy consideration was increasing sales.
“When I was negotiating the transparency laws for clinical trial results, it was DG Enterprise that wanted to water the rules down. Now they will be overseeing the European Medicines Agency as it implements the transparency regime, which is frankly concerning,” said Glenis Willmott, MEP S&D UK.
In an announcement on Wednesday 10 September, the President-elect (1) revealed that health technology and pharmaceutical policy is being moved from the Health and Food Safety Commissioner to the new Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (2). The European Public Health Alliance cannot support this decision which threatens Europe’s ability to prepare for major health crises such as outbreaks of infectious diseases and health threats arising from climate change, whilst putting the public interest behind the drive for profits in drug authorisation procedures.
The European Public Health Alliance believes that this move undermines the College of Commissioners and will deepen the rift between the institutions and ordinary people. We also deeply regret that the decision had not been subject to public debate, the lack of explanation provided for this policy shift, and that the announcement of portfolios came after the deadline for written questions in the Parliament. The unfortunate timing essentially inhibits the European Parliament’s right of scrutiny.
Health technology and pharmaceutical policy was transferred to the Health Commissioner in 2009 to, among other reasons (3), facilitate emergency preparedness (in response to the emergence of H1N1 and the alleged inability of DG Enterprise to provide the necessary leadership and coordination of vaccines) and to harmonise pharmaceutical governance along the lines of Europe’s Member States, all of whom manage pharmaceutical policy under their Ministries of Health.
“This is a potential disaster. President Barroso took the decision to strengthen Europe’s ability to respond to pandemics, and to bring the European Commission in line with national governments. It is disappointing that President-elect Juncker believes these objectives fall a pale second place to appeasing big business,” said Peggy Maguire, President of EPHA. “It sends a terrible message during times when criticism is being levelled at Europe: the College of Commissioners should work for the interest of citizens and not anonymous corporate masters,” continued Ms Maguire.
With the responsibility for pharmaceutical and medical devices policies removed from the Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Dr Andriukaitis the nominated Commissioner-designate, has effectively been denied the opportunity to achieve what his services are being requested to do. Pharmaceutical policy is an integral part of public health policy making. Medicines form a major part of prevention and treatment measures and are therefore of key importance in safeguarding health. Access to safe, effective and high quality medicines (4), accompanied by independent and unbiased information to patients, is a minimum requirement for sustainable health systems. Previous experience with the Directive on information to the general public on medicinal products subject to medical prescription demonstrated the difficulty of providing information that must be reliable, comparable, objective and user-friendly when the main policy consideration was increasing sales. (5)
“When I was negotiating the transparency laws for clinical trial results, it was DG Enterprise that wanted to water the rules down. Now they will be overseeing the European Medicines Agency as it implements the transparency regime, which is frankly concerning,” said Glenis Willmott, MEP S&D UK.
The Australian Reserve Bank governor has confirmed that a housing investor surge is his “one area of concern” and lending limits are “worth a try”. Mr Stevens reiterated that the focus of the bank’s concerns is a surge in property investors, especially in Australia’s two largest cities. “There is one area that I think is of concern right now, and that is that investor finance is growing at double-digit rates,” he observed.
“It’s nearly half the flow of new approvals, a lot of this is interest only lending in an environment of rising house prices, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.”
Mr Stevens reluctantly talked about so-called macroprudential policies that would place some extra restrictions on bank lending after being quizzed on the subject during the panel discussion.
In the bank’s latest half-yearly Financial Stability Review released yesterday, the RBA had revealed that it was in discussions with the banking regulator about imposing some such restrictions specifically on housing investment loans. Mr Stevens said such rules would not be a panacea to cure all ills, but he did not back away from the prospect of temporary, investor-targeted lending rules to curb finance growth in that sector. “I think it’s perfectly sound and sensible to ask ourselves whether there are tools that might at least lean on that a bit,” he said. “I see not much downside in doing so – the worst that could happen is it doesn’t have that big an effect, but if it had some and that helped us to square in some small way all the conflicting things that we have going on that is worth a try.”
The main topic of the governor’s talk was the current inquiry into Australia’s financial system. The Financial System Inquiry, commissioned by the Federal Government and chaired by former Commonwealth Bank chief David Murray, is due to complete its final report in November. Mr Stevens told the forum that regulation of risk is one of four areas he hopes the review will address. He says risk taking can be good, provided it is the right kind. “A feature of the world economy is there’s a lot of financial risk taking and not all that much real economy risk taking: the entrepreneurs with a project, an idea, a market, a product, a new worker,” he lamented. “That type of risk taking, which is the one we really want, there’s less of that than we would like.”
Kettan Takkar writes: India deserves a much larger car market and the country’s automobile manufactueres must introspect why so few cars are sold here compared to China,Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons has said.
“Indian car market doesn’t deserve to be 3 million. We need to ask ourselves have we made cars too expensive for consumers to own. Have we focused on a low-scale, high-margin business,” Tata told an audience at a function organised by Frost and Sullivan, a consultancy. The audience was predominantly from the automobile industry.
Tata was speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Growth and Innovation Leadership (GIL) 2014 Summit. He received the GIL Visionary Leadership Award and entered the GIL Community’s Hall of Fame joining an elite roster including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Richard Branson, Mitchell Baker, Jack Andraka, Marc Benioff, Steve Woods, and Judy Estrin, among others.
Depending on who you talk to…prices went up easily by 50% and perhaps by 70% over the past five years since the bottom in early 2009; everyone appears to agree that they are back to where they were in January 2008. What happened between then and now is a subject of collective amnesia as are many of the statements made at the 2008 Cityscape…for example the spectacularly miss-timed pronouncement by one expert… “Investors say 2009 will be the best year for real estate investment in MENA, ever”.
Two things can happen once real estate prices start to “cool” after a period of energetic growth. If that 50% to 70% was a “bubble” the next thing will likely happen will be a “bust”…good time to panic. There again, according to our calculations, prices went up by 100% in the five years preceding 2008, so perhaps that cooling could simply be a “Soros-Dip”, signaling that a new bubble is brewing in the background…good time to buy. Our view is neither:
This is a model of Dubai’s residential property prices published in July 2009. It offered an explanation of what had just happened (the Bubble & Pop); with a prediction in hard numbers for what was going to happen next.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12114.html
The historical line was based mainly on tracking asking prices of apartments in the Greens and Dubai Marina and weighting those back to a smaller data-base of actual transactions. It may not be representative of the market as a whole; compared to other indexes up to 2009 it agrees pretty well with Colliers and ASTECO, there is however a wide variation of opinions regards to the details amongst the experts. All the same, no one disagrees that there WAS a bubble up to late 2008 and there WAS a bust.
The thesis behind the prediction, i.e. the dotted-line, (explained in that article) is that in every market there is the “correct” price. But markets sometimes go into “disequilibrium”. When that happens, the amount of disequilibrium “UP” tends to be reflected in the amount of the subsequent disequilibrium “DOWN”.
From a practical standpoint, if you know what the “correct” price is; the theory says you can make reasonably accurate predictions about the gyrations in the immediate future, following the bust. Granted working out the “correct price” requires an understanding of valuation as in figuring out what International Valuation Standards calls “Other than Market Value”. Often the experts call that “Fair Value” although there is nothing “fair” about it. More confusing, different experts have different definitions about what “Fair Value” means, so it can mean just about anything, which is why real estate agents use the phase in the same breath as “sought-after”, pristine”…“prime”, whatever those words mean?
Semantics aside; if you know what the price “should” have been…if not for an episode of “disequilibrium” then after a bubble pop’s you can figure out
Karen Peetz has tough advice for bankers struggling to adapt to the harsher regulatory environment. “People really need to get it through their thick heads that it is here to stay. You have to adjust your operating model and get on with it, versus fighting, fighting, fighting.”
That’s vintage Peetz, who has honed the art of managing-and leading- through times of change. After the 2008 financial crisis, she played a key role in helping the government execute its Troubled Asset Relief Program. Then she guided her alma mater, Pennsylvania State University, through a devastating period, taking over as chairman of the board of trustees during the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. And now Peetz is helping reform the controversial tri-party repo market.
Peetz was promoted to president of BNY Mellon, overseeing global client management and regional management for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia and Latin America. She also has responsibility for human resources and BNY Mellon’s treasury services business, two areas in which she has particular expertise, having been personally involved in both over the course of her career.
Peetz, who has been in banking for three decades and at BNY Mellon for the past 15 years, was the company’s first female vice chairman and has sat on its executive committee since July 2007.
Peetz, who led BNY Mellon’s financial markets and treasury services group before her promotion in January, says big problems require new thinking and a good-sized serving of humble pie.
“It really took our industry a long time to realize that the game had changed,” Peetz says. “We need humility as leaders, because we haven’t done everything right. Many of our actions precipitated the financial crisis, collectively, and we have to take responsibility.”
“Culture is at the core of the industry’s future,” Peetz says. “When I think of how I was trained … that’s what we do: risk management. But we, as an industry, got away from training people properly as they come in the door. If you don’t build that culture of risk, this is the kind of thing that happens.”
To that end, BNY Mellon is creating a virtual university with six separate areas of learning, from sales and client service to risk and compliance to professional development. Peetz says the idea for the university-dubbed BKU, the firm’s ticker symbol-came from Chairman and CEO Gerald Hassell, who asked her to spearhead it.
The SEC has been busy keeping banking in line. Investment advisers are required to adopt and implement written compliance policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent violations of the Investment Advisers Act and its rules. An SEC examination and subsequent investigation found that Barclays failed to enhance its compliance infrastructure to integrate and support the acquisition and rapid growth of the advisory business from Lehman. The deficiencies in its compliance systems contributed to other securities law violations by Barclays.
To settle the SEC’s case, Barclays agreed to pay a $15 million penalty and to undertake remedial measures, including engaging an independent compliance consultant to conduct an internal review. Said Julie M. Riewe, Co-Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Asset Management Unit:
When a firm acquires an advisory business, it must devote the attention and resources necessary to build a robust compliance system. Barclays failed to establish this critical compliance foundation when it acquired Lehman’s advisory business, and as a result subjected its clients to a host of improper practices and inadequate disclosures.
According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding, Barclays failed to adopt and implement written policies and procedures and maintain certain required books and records to prevent the other violations. For instance, Barclays executed more than 1,500 principal transactions with its advisory client accounts without making the required written disclosures or obtaining client consent. Barclays also earned revenues and charged commissions and fees that were inconsistent with its disclosures for 2,785 advisory client accounts. Barclays also violated custody provisions of the Advisers Act, and underreported its assets under management by $754 million when it amended its Form ADV on March 31, 2011. The violations resulted in overcharges and client losses of approximately $472,000 and additional revenue to Barclays of more than $3.1 million. Barclays has since reimbursed or credited its affected clients approximately $3.8 million including interest.
The SEC’s order finds that Barclays violated Sections 204(a), 206(2), 206(3), 206(4), and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and Advisers Act Rules 204-2, 206(4)-2 and 206(4)-7. In addition to the $15 million penalty, Barclays agreed to retain an independent compliance consultant to internally address the violations. Without admitting or denying the findings, Barclays agreed to be censured and must cease and desist from committing or causing any further such violations.
First ever fine for a broker-dealer failing to protect a customer’s material nonpublic information.
According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding, Wells Fargo highlighted in internal documents the risk of its personnel misusing confidential information obtained from retail customers and clients. The risk manifested itself when a Wells Fargo broker learned confidentially from his customer that Burger King was being acquired by a New York-based private equity firm. The broker then traded on that nonpublic information ahead of the public announcement. The SEC charged the broker with insider trading and obtained an asset freeze to prevent him from transferring illicit profits outside the U.S.
The SEC’s order finds that multiple groups responsible for compliance or supervision within Wells Fargo received indications that the broker was misusing customer information. However, these groups lacked coordination or any assigned responsibilities, and they ultimately failed to act on these indications. Federal law requires broker-dealers and investment advisers to establish, maintain, and enforce policies and procedures to prevent such misuse of material nonpublic information. Said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division:
When investors entrust private information to their stockbrokers or investment advisers, they have the right to expect that it will not be exploited. In this case – our first against a broker-dealer for failing to protect the nonpublic information conveyed by its customers – Wells Fargo failed to implement procedures to prevent misuse of such information.
The SEC’s order also finds that when SEC investigators sought all documents related to the firm’s compliance reviews of the broker’s trading, Wells Fargo’s document production omitted documents related to the broker’s trading in Burger King stock. Six months after SEC investigators initially requested documents, Wells Fargo produced the Burger King-related review without any explanation as to why it was not produced in the first place. Furthermore, Wells Fargo failed to provide an accurate record of the review because one of the documents had been altered to include additional language before it was produced to the SEC. Said Daniel M. Hawke, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit:
Wells Fargo unreasonably delayed producing documents to the SEC’s staff and altered a previously requested compliance document after the SEC charged a former Wells Fargo employee with insider trading. The firm’s actions improperly delayed our investigation, and the production of an altered document interfered with our search for the truth.
The SEC’s order finds that Wells Fargo violated Section 15(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 204A of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which require broker-dealers and investments advisers to establish, maintain, and enforce policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent the misuse of material nonpublic information. Wells Fargo Advisors also violated Sections 17(a) and 17(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 17a-4(j) as well as Section 204(a) of the Advisers Act, which require broker-dealers and investment advisers to promptly produce accurate books and records to the SEC. Wells Fargo admitted the findings and acknowledged its violation of the federal securities laws. In addition to the $5 million penalty, the firm agreed to retain an independent consultant to review its policies and procedures. The SEC’s order censures Wells Fargo and requires the firm to cease and desist from committing or causing these violations.
