Fintech
Richard R. Best Named Director of SEC’s New York Regional Office
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Washington, D.C.–(Newsfile Corp. – August 19, 2020) – The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Richard R. Best has been named Director of the New York Regional Office. Mr. Best will succeed Marc P. Berger, who has been named Deputy Director of the Division of Enforcement.
Mr. Best joined the SEC in June 2015 as the Regional Director of the SEC’s Salt Lake Office, and in 2018, he was named Regional Director of its Atlanta Office. In his new role, Mr. Best will lead a team of approximately 400 staff, including enforcement attorneys, accountants, and investigators who investigate and enforce the federal securities laws nationwide and examiners who perform compliance inspections in the New York region. The New York Regional Office is responsible for the largest concentration of SEC-registered financial institutions, including more than 4,000 investment banks, investment advisers, broker-dealers, mutual funds, and hedge funds.
“Richard has been a remarkable leader of two SEC regional offices. During his tenure in both Salt Lake and Atlanta, he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to effectively pursue the unique needs of the region, always with a keen eye on investor protection and market integrity,” said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. “Richard has also been a key part of many of the SEC’s agency-wide efforts to connect with investors in new and meaningful ways. I look forward to the many successes his leadership and investor-first focus will bring to the New York Regional Office.”
“Richard is widely respected for being a talented lawyer and a strong leader, and I am thrilled that he has agreed to take on this new role,” said Stephanie Avakian, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “He is a wonderful colleague and I look forward to continuing to work closely with him as he leads the New York Regional Office.”
“Richard has distinguished himself as a strong leader across both Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) and Enforcement in each regional office he has led. His exceptional prior experience and performance leading those offices, as well as his outstanding legal experiences prior to his time at the Commission, make him an outstanding choice to lead our women and men of the New York Regional Office,” said Pete Driscoll, Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. “We in OCIE congratulate him and look forward to continuing to have the benefit of Richard’s talents in his newest leadership role.”
Mr. Best said, “I am excited and honored to join the New York Regional Office. During my time at the SEC, I have collaborated with the New York office and its incredibly talented and dedicated examinations and enforcement staff and look forward to leading their efforts to protect investors and ensure fair and orderly markets.”
Under Mr. Best’s stewardship, the Atlanta office has investigated and litigated a number of impactful enforcement cases, including the Commission’s actions against:
- A former chief information officer of an Equifax business unit with insider trading in advance of the company’s September 2017 announcement about a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 148 million U.S. customers;
- SCANA Corp., two of its former top executives, and South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. with defrauding investors by allegedly making false and misleading statements about a nuclear power plant expansion that was ultimately abandoned;
- Turbo Global Partners Inc. and its CEO for allegedly making false and misleading press releases claiming to offer products to combat the COVID-19 virus; and
- Madison Timber Properties LLC and its principal in connection with an alleged $85 million offering fraud.
Mr. Best joined the SEC from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in New York, where he was a senior director and chief counsel in its Department of Enforcement. Mr. Best previously held other supervisory and investigative positions within FINRA’s Enforcement function. He also spent approximately 10 years as a prosecutor in the Office of the Bronx County District Attorney, where he handled and supervised high-profile public integrity and organized crime prosecutions, among other matters. He earned his law degree from the Howard University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury.
Fintech
Central banks and the FinTech sector unite to change global payments space
![central-banks-and-the-fintech-sector-unite-to-change-global-payments-space](https://thefintechbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51859-central-banks-and-the-fintech-sector-unite-to-change-global-payments-space.jpg)
The BIS, along with seven leading central banks and a cohort of private financial firms, has embarked on an ambitious venture known as Project Agorá.
Named after the Greek word for “marketplace,” this initiative stands at the forefront of exploring the potential of tokenisation to significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the monetary system worldwide.
Central to this pioneering project are the Bank of France (on behalf of the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These institutions have joined forces under the banner of Project Agorá, in partnership with an extensive assembly of private financial entities convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
At the heart of Project Agorá is the pursuit of integrating tokenised commercial bank deposits with tokenised wholesale central bank money within a unified, public-private programmable financial platform. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of smart contracts and programmability, the project aspires to unlock new transactional possibilities that were previously infeasible or impractical, thereby fostering novel opportunities that could benefit businesses and consumers alike.
The collaborative effort seeks to address and surmount a variety of structural inefficiencies that currently plague cross-border payments. These challenges include disparate legal, regulatory, and technical standards; varying operating hours and time zones; and the heightened complexity associated with conducting financial integrity checks (such as anti-money laundering and customer verification procedures), which are often redundantly executed across multiple stages of a single transaction due to the involvement of several intermediaries.
As a beacon of experimental and exploratory projects, the BIS Innovation Hub is committed to delivering public goods to the global central banking community through initiatives like Project Agorá. In line with this mission, the BIS will soon issue a call for expressions of interest from private financial institutions eager to contribute to this ground-breaking project. The IIF will facilitate the involvement of private sector participants, extending an invitation to regulated financial institutions representing each of the seven aforementioned currencies to partake in this transformative endeavour.
Source: fintech.globa
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Fintech
TD Bank inks multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud
![td-bank-inks-multi-year-strategic-partnership-with-google-cloud](https://thefintechbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51861-td-bank-inks-multi-year-strategic-partnership-with-google-cloud.jpg)
TD Bank has inked a multi-year deal with Google Cloud as it looks to streamline the development and deployment of new products and services.
The deal will see the Canadian banking group integrate the vendor’s cloud services into a wider portion of its technology solutions portfolio, a move which TD expects will enable it “to respond quickly to changing customer expectations by rolling out new features, updates, or entirely new financial products at an accelerated pace”.
This marks an expansion of the already established relationship between TD Bank and Google Cloud after the group previously adopted the vendor’s Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for TD Securities Automated Trading (TDSAT), the Chicago-based subsidiary of its investment banking unit, TD Securities.
TDSAT uses GKE for process automation and quantitative modelling across fixed income markets, resulting in the development of a “data-driven research platform” capable of processing large research workloads in trading.
Dan Bosman, SVP and CIO of TD Securities, claims the infrastructure has so far supported TDSAT with “compute-intensive quantitative analysis” while expanding the subsidiary’s “trading volumes and portfolio size”.
TD’s new partnership with Google Cloud will see the group attempt to replicate the same level of success across its entire portfolio.
Source: fintechfutures.com
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Fintech
MAS launches transformative platform to combat money laundering
![mas-launches-transformative-platform-to-combat-money-laundering](https://thefintechbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/51863-mas-launches-transformative-platform-to-combat-money-laundering.jpg)
The MAS has unveiled Cosmic, an acronym for Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Information and Cases, a new money laundering platform.
According to Business Times, launched on April 1, Cosmic stands out as the first centralised digital platform dedicated to combating money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing on a worldwide scale. This move follows the enactment of the Financial Services and Markets (Amendment) Act 2023, which, along with its subsidiary legislation, commenced on the same day to provide a solid legal foundation and safeguards for information sharing among financial institutions (FIs).
Cosmic enables participating FIs to exchange customer information when certain “red flags” indicate potential suspicious activities. The platform’s introduction is a testament to MAS’s commitment to ensuring the integrity of the financial sector, mandating participants to establish stringent policies and operational safeguards to maintain the confidentiality of the shared information. This strategic approach allows for the efficient exchange of intelligence on potential criminal activities while protecting legitimate customers.
Significantly, Cosmic was co-developed by MAS and six leading commercial banks in Singapore—OCBC, UOB, DBS, Citibank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered—which will serve as participant FIs during its initial phase. The initiative emphasizes voluntary information sharing focused on addressing key financial crime risks within the commercial banking sector, such as the misuse of legal persons, trade finance, and proliferation financing.
Loo Siew Yee, assistant managing director for policy, payments, and financial crime at MAS, highlighted that Cosmic enhances the existing collaboration between the industry and law enforcement authorities, fortifying Singapore’s reputation as a well-regulated and trusted financial hub. Similarly, Pua Xiao Wei of Citi Singapore and Loretta Yuen of OCBC have expressed their institutions’ support for Cosmic, noting its potential to ramp up anti-money laundering efforts and its significance as a development in the banking sector’s ability to combat financial crimes efficiently. DBS’ Lam Chee Kin also praised Cosmic as a “game changer,” emphasizing the careful balance between combating financial crime and ensuring legitimate customers’ access to financial services.
Source: fintech.global
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