Commentary
Journal Commentaries
Keep Regulation Functional (October 2008)
CSFME’s Executive Director Ed Blount interviews SEC Chairman Chris Cox.
American Banking Association Banking Journal
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-187494664/keep-functional-regulation-how-financial-regulation
The Bear Market Posse, or Counterparty Risk Management during the Recent Turmoil (Sept. 2008)
by Ed Blount
The RMA Journal, v91n1, 28-32, 5 pages Sep 2008.
Searching for New Paradigms at BIS (July 2008)
by Ed Blount
Unexpected deficiencies in bank capital after recent market turmoil has regulators rethinking aspects of Basel II and “value at risk.”
American Banking Association Banking Journal
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-181991450/searching-for-new-paradigms-at-bis-market-turmoil
Will Basel II Affect The Competitive Landscape? (September 2003)
By Ed Blount
Newly elected Basel Committee Chairman Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain, gives his views on the revised Basel capital accord, relative to its potential effects on competition and risk management in banking markets.
American Banking Association Banking Journal
https://www.questia.com/read/1G1-108008773/will-basel-ii-affect-the-competitive-landscape-the
CSFME Commentaries
Enlightened, not Reactive Regulation: Now It Starts
Since passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the financial industry has been dealing with an almost unstoppable wave of regulatory reforms. Most, if not all have been designed to prevent a repetition of the problems that followed the failure of AIG and Lehman Brothers in 2008. Now, after the U.S. election of a conservative majority in two (and soon to be all three) branches of the U.S. federal government, many bankers feel that a huge regulatory weight is about to be lifted.
Dealer-based Execution on Trial
Is it true that customers always get a better price for their trades when executions take place on a regulated exchange? That seems to be the premise underlying a putative class action suit filed in federal court last November in the Southern District of New York. Next week, on July 19th, the court and litigants will be developing the pretrial schedule, including discovery and deadlines for naming experts, in what may well be a landmark case for competition in financial services.
Surprise! Market Theories Fail in Real-World Tests!!
“There is nothing less practical than a bad theory,” wrote CEO Paul Shott Stevens of the Investment Company Institute (ICI) in a July 2016 blog. Mr. Stevens introduced a series of recent findings that the ICI suggests may present a rebuttal to their members of the “first-mover” hypothesis. What is that, one may ask, and why should I care?
More Challenges for Fund Directors in the New Regulatory Environment
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White’s March 29 speech to the Mutual Fund Directors’ Forum can be seen as a showcase of the philosophical differences between market regulators and banking supervisors. For directors, the speech also reveals the sometimes conflicting results of the compliance forces created by these two complementary regulatory systems.
Global Financial Reform: Unintended Adverse Consequences in Connected Markets
Financial markets in the 21st Century are profoundly global. This fact was amply demonstrated by the 2007 – 2009 financial crisis, which was centered in the banking systems of the developed western economies but transmitted with devastating effect to economies worldwide. And yet, despite the global consequences of systemic risk transmission, the supervision of financial markets remains essentially a national discipline.
BIS Sees the Financial System at a Crossroads
In their 84th Annual Report, the Bank for International Settlements examines the current state of global financial affairs and highlights some trends it sees emerging in the financial framework. While noting that the overall financial system has has gained some strength since the crisis, banks remain in a rebuilding phase, concentrating their business models towards traditional banking.
Controversial OFR Report Yields Some Valuable Findings
The September 2013 Office of Financial Research (OFR) report entitled “Asset Management and Financial Stability” attempts to present a critical analysis of how asset management firms and the activities in which they engage can introduce vulnerabilities that could pose, amplify, or transmit threats to financial stability.
Are Institutional Investors Voting Proxies with the Correct Mindset?
The federal government is not now and has never been in the business of telling you how you should vote your proxies. But it seems that through regulatory creep, the government may have indirectly given the power to tell investors how to vote their proxies to someone else entirely. Regulating disclosures and mechanics by which we vote proxies is plainly within the scope of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s mission.
With Power Comes Responsibility. Institutional Investors’ Role In Corporate Governance.
Over the past sixty years, as more and more people in the US have begun to participate in the capital markets through retirement plans, mutual funds, ETFs and other pooled investment vehicles, institutional investors have grown from bit players in the markets, owning about 5% of US equities prior to 1945, to being major players today, owning greater than 67% of US equities. This growth in the proportion of assets managed by institutional investors has also been accompanied by a dramatic growth over the same period in the market capitalization of US listed companies.
Book Review. “China’s Superbank,” The Special Role of the China Development Bank
CSFME’s executive director, Ed Blount, has written a new book review for the ABA Banking Journal. Mr. Blount reviews “China’s Super Bank” by Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe, in which the authors present what Blount calls a worthy history of the role of the China Development Bank in less than three decades of urbanization.