Mark McCombe is a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee. He is a Senior Managing Director and is the Chief Client Officer of BlackRock overseeing all Global client segments. Before joining BlackRock, he served as Chief Executive Officer in Hong Kong for HSBC. McCombe has served on a number of finance industry bodies including the Risk Management Committee of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, the Banking Advisory Committee for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Hong Kong Association of Banks, and as a council member of the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC). McCombe earned an MA degree from Aberdeen University and attended Wharton Business School, where he completed the Advanced Management Program.
Article: It’s a ‘Swimming Naked’ Moment: The Financial System Has a Real Test
Article - MediaIt’s a ‘Swimming Naked’ Moment: The Financial System Has a Real Test
James B. Stewart
New York Times, 10 March 2020
The investor Warren Buffett once gave a famous warning: “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”
The tide has just gone out again, and clues to who’s been swimming naked have begun to emerge.
Mr. Buffett first made that comment in 1992, after Hurricane Andrew exposed the inadequacies of the insurance industry, to describe the rosy appearances that can mask financial recklessness until the good times end.
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Article: Merrill Lynch Pays $36.5 Million to Settle Spoofing Charges
Article - MediaMerrill Lynch Pays $36.5 Million to Settle Spoofing Charges
Aziz Abdel-Qader
Finance Magnates, 26 June 2019
Merrill Lynch Commodities, Inc. (MLCI) has just settled spoofing charges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by agreeing to pay a combined $36.5 million. The CFTC action centered on spoofing activity carried out by Bank of America’s global commodities trading business in a scheme that ran from 2008 through 2014 and involved dozens of fraudulent orders that were canceled before execution.
MLCI precious metals traders are accused of working with other traders to rig the purchase and sale of futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.
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Article: Key to catching the traders charged with manipulating metals futures: electronic chatter
Article - MediaKey to catching the traders charged with manipulating metals futures: electronic chatter
Francine McKenna
MarketWatch, 30 January 2018
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced criminal and civil enforcement actions on Monday against Deutsche Bank AG and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc, UBS AG and HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. and six individuals involved in spoofing and stop loss collusion schemes. The criminal and civil enforcement actions were filed in conjunction with the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Investigative Division.
Deutsche Bank AG and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. were hit the hardest, agreeing to pay a $30 million penalty while neither admitting or denying they failed to supervise precious metals traders who allegedly schemed to manipulate the price of precious metals futures contracts and allegedly colluding to trigger customer stop-loss orders. The fraud allegedly ran from Feb. 2008 to at least Sept. 2014.
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Article: Federal Charges Filed in Price ‘Spoofing’ Inquiry on Wall St.
Article - MediaFederal Charges Filed in Price ‘Spoofing’ Inquiry on Wall St.
Emily Flitter
New York Times, 29 January 2018
Federal authorities have filed civil and criminal charges against a group of Wall Street banks and individuals that they say tried to manipulate markets in gold, silver and certain financial products, including by showing potential customers fake prices.
The actions, filed over the past several days, are part of a yearslong effort by financial regulators and the Department of Justice to stamp out behavior that gives the biggest banks an advantage over smaller market players.
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Article: JP Morgan Agrees New Settlement for FX Manipulation
Article - MediaJP Morgan Agrees New Settlement for FX Manipulation
Profit & Loss, 7 January 2015
JP Morgan has agreed a settlement, believed to be worth $100 million, in an antitrust litigation lawsuit brought against 12 major banks for alleged manipulation of the FX market.
The bank submitted a letter to judge Lorna Scholfield of the Court of the Southern District of New York, stating that it had reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs in this litigation and that is planning to file a copy of the settlement terms with the court for approval by the end of January.
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Article: Currency trading scandals are the next big black eye for banks
Article - MediaCurrency trading scandals are the next big black eye for banks
Mark DeCambre, Jason Karaian
Quartz, 5 February 2014
These days, it doesn’t take much digging to find potentially scandalous behavior coursing through the world’s biggest banks. But the latest round of probes into currency trading are shaping up to be a real doozy.
Already more than 20 traders, which make money for their firms by betting on currencies’ shifting values, have left or been placed on leave by their employers. These banks and traders have not been accused of wrongdoing, but their departures send a message that something is amiss in currency trading.
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Article: Naked Gold Shorts: The Hows and Whys of Gold Price Manipulation
Article - MediaNaked Gold Shorts: The Hows and Whys of Gold Price Manipulation
Commodity Trade Mantra, 20 January 2014
The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis.
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Article: The Federal Reserve Bank is Naked: QE 10T Dollar ‘Loans’ Swaps and Naked Mortgage Bonds of Quantitative Easing 1
Article - MediaLan Pham
Economics Voodoo, 28 December 2012
The banking and financial crisis emerging in September 2008 is often called a global financial crisis, but to be more precise the data point to a crisis of the Western central banks. I referenced euros previously, so this is the euros companion to Quantitative Easing 0-1-2-3∞ & The Federal Reserve’s Love Affair with its Banks and Mortgage Bonds: Levitating The Black Hole. QE 0-1-2-3 is incomplete as concurrently the Federal Reserve Bank also entered into $10.06 Trillion in dollar ‘loans’ liquidity swaps with foreign central banks that we examine in Section I. Why QE $10T as we look at a few of Europe’s largest banks in Section II, which leads us to the $1.25 Trillion naked reasons behind the Federal Reserve Bank’s Quantitative Easing I purchase of phantom agency mortgage bonds that we revisit more closely in Section III.
