Ex-Nomura Traders Accused of CMBS Fraud

Two former head traders at Nomura Securities International have been charged with generating more than $750,000 in illicit profits for the firm from trading commercial mortgage-backed securities on the secondary market.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said James Im and Kee Chan — both ...

By Matthew Heller • May 16, 2017

Advice to Cyber Insurance Buyers: You Are Not Alone

The cyber insurance market continues to evolve, and the number of companies buying cyber insurance continues to expand. What’s more, that expanding cyber market offers a wide variety of coverage terms at different price points.But companies interested in securing cyber insurance should know that ...

By Lynda Bennett • May 9, 2017

High Court Clears Way for Suits Against GM

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear General Motor’s appeal of a lower court decision that would allow hundreds of customer lawsuits over a deadly ignition-switch defect to proceed.GM’s petition for Supreme Court review focused on the issue of whether the automaker was shielded from liabili...

By Matthew Heller • April 25, 2017

SEC Keeps up High Rate of Enforcement Activity

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement activity continued at a strong pace during the first half of fiscal 2017 despite the uncertainty hanging over the agency since President Donald Trump took office.Between Oct. 1 and March 31, the SEC filed 334 total enforcement actions, compared ...

By Matthew Heller • April 21, 2017

Raymond James to Pay $150M Over Resort Fraud

Raymond James has agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations that it helped the owner and president of a failed Vermont ski resort misuse hundreds of millions of dollars raised through the federal EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program.The case of the Jay Peak resort is the largest EB-5 fraud...

By Matthew Heller • April 14, 2017

SEC Alleges Insider Trading on Telecom Deal

One or more unknown traders made more than $1 million in illicit profits by trading in General Communication Inc. call option contracts in advance of its acquisition by Liberty Interactive, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has alleged.The identity of the traders was not disclosed in a ...

By Matthew Heller • April 14, 2017

Two Accused of Insider Trading on Mobileye Deal

In the second insider trading case arising from the $15.3 billion takeover of Mobileye NV by Intel, two Virginia men have been charged with making $925,000 in illicit profits based on nonpublic information about the pending deal.The U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission accused Lawrence Cluff ...

By Matthew Heller • April 7, 2017

KPIs: The Key to Corporate Compliance

While some industries, particularly those that are intensely regulated, have well-developed risk and compliance functions, the newly released Justice Department guidance, “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs,” is essential reading for all businesses. Specifically, the guidance focuses on ...

By Steven Neuman • April 4, 2017

How Analytics Is Helping to Curb Insurance Losses

When it comes to risk management, CFOs are in a bind: They’re expected to aggressively tackle serious business risks – while spending reluctantly. You sometimes feel damned if you do and damned if you don’t.Addressing glaring risks is easy. Quietly simmering risks, however, are also likely to dis...

By Gary Love • April 3, 2017

When One Insurance Claim Is Better than Many

“Copycat” lawsuits are a common problem for corporations. For example, multiple lawsuits often are filed after the price of a company’s stock drops, each claiming that alleged misconduct or neglect of management contributed to the loss.When they’re faced with multiple claims or lawsuits that seem...

By Eric Jesse and Catherine Serafin • April 3, 2017

Disaster Losses Hit Five-Year High of $175B

Total economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters nearly doubled in 2016, with Asia being hit worst, while insurance payouts increased 42% from a year earlier, according to a report by Swiss Re.Globally, there were 327 disaster events in 2016, the reinsurer said, resulting in...

By Matthew Heller • March 29, 2017

Neiman Agrees to Pay $1.6M Over Data Breach

After three years of litigation, Neiman Marcus has agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle a class action over a security breach that exposed the credit card information of about 350,000 customers.Settlement papers were filed with a federal judge Friday in a case that alleged Neiman was liable for t...

By Matthew Heller • March 21, 2017

ZTE Fined $900M for Iran Sanctions Busting

Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp. has agreed to pay nearly $900 million to settle U.S. allegations that it evaded sanctions against Iran by shipping about $32 million of sensitive U.S.-made technology to the country.ZTE purchases about $2.6 billion worth of components a year from U.S. fir...

By Matthew Heller • March 8, 2017

Dodd-Frank: Benefits Among the Burdens

It’s well known that repealing or replacing the Dodd-Frank Act is a top priority on the new presidential administration’s regulatory “to-do” list. But even though the law’s ultimate fate is uncertain, the need to comply with its requirements led financial institutions to make changes in their tec...

By Mallinath Sengupta • March 7, 2017

How CFOs Can Strengthen Technology Controls

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, better known as COSO, is akin to the high priests of internal controls. In 2013, COSO updated their Internal Control Integrated Framework to put an emphasis on technology controls. Since data breaches suggest weak controls, CFO...

By Craig Callé • March 6, 2017

Labor Dept. Seeks Delay in ‘Fiduciary’ Rule

The Labor Department is proposing a 60-day delay in implementation of an Obama-era rule on retirement advisers so it can have more time to evaluate whether it harms consumers by limiting their investment options.President Trump had asked the department to review the so-called fiduciary rule, whic...

By Matthew Heller • March 3, 2017

Traders’ Assets Frozen in Insider Trading Probe

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of traders it believes were involved in an insider trading scheme that made $3.6 million in illegal profits related to the recent takeover of Fortress Investment Group by Japan’s SoftBank Group.A New Jersey judge granted the SEC’s ...

By Matthew Heller • March 2, 2017

Should U.S. CFOs Worry About EU Cyber Risk Rules?

CFOs around the world have one more risk to fold into their financial planning strategies. The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), set to come into effect on May 25, 2018, will apply to every organization of every size, industry, and geography that processes data from EU ...

By Kevin P. Kalinich • Feb. 10, 2017

Court Blocks Another Healthcare Megamerger

A federal judge has ruled that Anthem’s proposed $54 billion takeover of Cigna would be anticompetitive — the second time in three weeks that a court has blocked a healthcare industry megamerger.Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the Justice Depa...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 9, 2017

The Corporatization of Cyber Crime

“It’s beautiful, it’s elegant, it’s convincing,” Markus Jakobsson gushes, describing the fake email used to hack into the personal Gmail account of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman.Sent on March 19, 2016, to the chairman, John Podesta, the email landed in the spam folder of his ac...

By David Katz • Feb. 9, 2017

Lessons Learned from the Dyn Attack

This past October, Halloween wasn’t the only event that spooked people. A well-executed cyberattack left users of Twitter, Spotify, Paypal, Airbnb, Etsy, and Netflix vulnerable to identity theft. The crime was done to Dyn, a cloud-based company that manages website domains and routes internet tra...

By Christopher Roach • Feb. 9, 2017

Cyber Risks Threaten Physical Security, Industrial Controls

“What are we doing to protect ourselves from cyberattacks?”It’s a question every CFO eventually asks their team.Although the question suggests IT-specific concerns like malware, firewalls, and virus scans, CFOs need to pause and broaden their perspective, examine cyber-related business risk in th...

By Kevin Ingram • Feb. 9, 2017

Special Report: Preventing Cybersecurity Losses

When finance chiefs ask their teams what they’re doing to protect their employers from cyberattacks, they inevitably get answers involving “IT-specific concerns like malware, firewalls, and virus scans,” writes FM Global CFO Kevin Ingram in our special report on preventing cybersecurity.But preve...

By David Katz • Feb. 9, 2017

Vizio Fined $2M Over Data Collection From TVs

Vizio has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle charges it installed software on its “smart” televisions to collect data on the viewing habits of millions of consumers without their consent.The Federal Trade Commission and the New Jersey attorney general said the software enables Vizio televisions...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 6, 2017

Class-Action Filings Hit Record in U.S. Courts

The number of federal securities class-action filings surged to a record high in 2016 as plaintiffs’ lawyers turned to the federal courts to file suits over merger and acquisition deals.Class-action filings totaled 270, an increase of 43% on the 188 filings in 2015 and 44% above the 1997–2015 his...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 31, 2017