Harrison – Financial Treason & Crime

Polly Jean Harrison, 10 April 2021

As cases of fraud and money laundering rose during the pandemic last year, banks in the UK faced unforeseen challenges. In a new study by global analytics software provider FICO and independent research firm OMDIA, 79 per cent of respondents from UK banks said that working from home had a high or major impact on the effectiveness of their financial crime prevention.

“Just as the pandemic put huge stresses on the health care system, it put huge stresses on fraud and financial crime management teams,” explained Toby Carlin, senior director for fraud consulting at FICO. “Teams that collaborate in person and work with large software systems that have restricted access found that working from home hurt their productivity. This was compounded as the volume of fraud attacks rose.” Continue reading “Article: FICO Survey Finds UK Banks Struggled With Covid-19 Financial Crime Surge”

09/03/202003/08/2021

Article: Work from Home Gets Entrenched: Embraced by Workers & Businesses in the UK, it’s Upending Real Estate, Retail, Restaurants, Bars, Cafés

Article - Media, Publications

Work from Home Gets Entrenched: Embraced by Workers & Businesses in the UK, it’s Upending Real Estate, Retail, Restaurants, Bars, Cafés

Nick Corbishley, 03 September 2020

One of the UK’s largest outsourcing companies, Capita plc, which employs 45,000 people across the country, has just done what many other companies have been thinking and talking about doing since the virus crisis began: it announced that it is permanently closing more than a third of its offices. As a result, the leases on almost 100 workplaces will be terminated.

Like many large outsourcing companies in the UK, Capita has been struggling for years. It did not collapse and get liquidated like erstwhile giant Carillion but its share price has collapsed 97% since 2015. Even before the virus crisis began, the firm was exploring ways of slashing costs, including embracing more flexible working practices such as work from home, which the lockdown pushed to the fore. The company says that employees are firmly on board with the changes. Continue reading “Article: Work from Home Gets Entrenched: Embraced by Workers & Businesses in the UK, it’s Upending Real Estate, Retail, Restaurants, Bars, Cafés”

05/20/201503/13/2021

Article: 5 big banks pay $5.4 billion for rigging currencies

Article - Media, Publications

5 big banks pay $5.4 billion for rigging currencies

Virginia Harrison and Mark Thompson, 20 May 2015

Citigroup (C), Barclays (BCS), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBSPF)were fined more than $2.5 billion by the U.S. after pleading guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of dollars and euros. The four banks, plus UBS (UBS) , have also been fined $1.6 billion by the Federal Reserve, and Barclays will pay regulators another $1.3 billion to settle related claims.

The first four banks operated what they described as “The Cartel” from as early as 2007, using online chatrooms and coded language to influence the twice-daily setting of benchmarks in an effort to increase their profits. The guilty banks “participated in a brazen display of collusion and foreign exchange rate market manipulation,” said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Continue reading “Article: 5 big banks pay $5.4 billion for rigging currencies”