You may as well act as though you’re responsible for everything, because you’re going to have to live with the results. If that sounds like the motto of an executive who doesn’t want to delegate, it isn’t. It’s knowing that taking personal control is sometimes the only right thing to do. That is definitely the case when it […]
AIFMD’s Depositary Lite: Handy Option With Limited Lifespan?
It’s lite, but is it right? That’s the question, some fund managers should be asking themselves about which business model they use when selecting a depositary to perform critical post-trade services under the new European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), a regulatory initiative which enables cross-border marketing of alternative funds in EU countries. Given […]
US Cost-Basis Reporting: Easing the Taxing Final Lap (Updated)
FinOps takeaway: You can’t second-guess the investor; be ready for everything. Although the third phase of the US Internal Revenue Service’s new rules on cost-basis reporting — those affecting accounts in debt instruments — technically became effective in January 1, 2014, broker-dealers and other financial intermediaries have plenty more operational blood, sweat and tears to spill […]
Hedge Fund Managers: The Big Headache of Healthcare Reform
FinOps takeaway: Your count of “full-time employees” may not be what the IRS says it is. Mainstream attention on the controversial US healthcare legislation has focused on how difficult or financially affordable access to health insurance may be for individual people. For employers, there is a far larger and only slowly emerging story in the huge difficulty and cost they […]
Money Market Fund Managers: SEC Ships New Operational Challenges
After years of uncertainty about how regulatory reform would play out, money market fund managers may be relieved to know finally how they will be regulated by new rules adopted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But the news won’t be particularly comforting to the operations, compliance and technology staff of the funds, which represent a third of […]
Fund Managers: Addressing the Regulatory Data Quagmire (Updated)
Dodd-Frank. EMIR. FATCA. AIFMD. Solvency II. The reporting obligations of fund managers just keep growing. The snowballing burden — with new regulations and reporting rules popping up at an alarming pace — is forcing many to step back from their usual resigned willingness to learn and follow one regulatory rule after another. The emerging alternative: looking at the bigger picture of […]
European Transaction Tax: The Taxing Job of Getting Ready
Let’s face it. Consumers aren’t eager to pay sales taxes, but neither are retailers eager to charge and collect them. Taxes not only raise prices and potentially reduce the number of sales made, but tax collection also creates operational and technological burdens to administer. Now imagine operations and IT specialists across the globe having to […]
GATCA: Brace for FATCA on Steroids
The US Internal Revenue Service didn’t make any friends among financial firms abroad when it imposed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to make non-US financial institutions responsible for preventing tax evasion by US persons. Yet it definitely caught the attention of tax authorities in other nations. Several dozen of the world’s largest markets — led […]
Countdown to AIFMD: Addressing the New Risk Management Landscape
With the deadline for fund managers to apply for regulatory recognition as alternative investment fund managers (AIFMs) less than a week away, one would think they have already crossed their T’s and dotted their I’s when it comes to being prepared. But that’s not the case for many, according to industry research. Surprisingly, most small […]
BNP Paribas $9B Fine: Dirty Messages and Dirty Money
Motive, means and opportunity. Those are the three elements that criminal prosecutors look for, when setting up a criminal conviction. In a case involving BNP Paribas (BNPP) — the largest bank in France and the fifth largest in the world — prompting US$8.97 billion in fines and a guilty plea to a criminal charge in a […]