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Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced that in an agreed settlement before the Federal Court, Australian financial services group Westpac will pay a civil penalty of AUD35 million after admitting breaches of Australia's responsible lending rules. The door-of-the-court settlement avoids a lengthy trial that should have started yesterday.

*** Update: see Westpac's new best friend? Australian Federal Court rejects settlement with regulator ***

Australia's ASIC has undertaken an extensive review of so-called "reverse mortgages" which are actual mortgages with potentially catastrophic long-tail results, which may be one of the things that borrowers did not understand. The findings of the review are startling.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has made a surprising change to the way in which Regulations are published, making the MAS website, and not paper documents, the source of record.

In a three year credit deal, the EBRD is lending USD (not euros, which might seem weird) to Bank CenterCredit (BCC - no comments please). The total amount is for a maximum of USD45 million. Special provisions are made for businesses run by women.

* Three-year loan of up to USD40 million provided to domestic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
* Three-year loan of up to USD5 million under Kazakhstan Women in Business programme

On Friday 13th July 2018, the UK's Serious Fraud Office obtained, from a Magistrates' Court, a warrant for the arrest of Benedikt Sobotka has been issued over his failure to appear for questioning in an ongoing corruption investigation into ENRC and related companies. Failure to appear when required to do so is itself a criminal offence, independent of the allegations under investigation.

AUSTRAC has released a consultation paper relating to counter-money laundering regulations in the securities sector.

Mobile payments are exploited by criminals who use services such as AliPay and WePay coupled with QR codes and while the companies behind the services are, well, behind on customer protection, The People's Bank of China, the central bank, is running ahead of regulators in other jurisdictions to find a solution. Their first idea was harsh. Their second is brutal. Can it work?

There's a huge amount of excitement in Australia about the prosecution of several bankers for colluding in a share support scheme where a share issue did not fully sell out. Instead of being charged with market manipulation, itself a serious offence, federal prosecutors have taken the alternative of charging them with cartel offences. There's a lot of people spinning like tops, having panic attacks about what it means for investment banking and the professional support services like lawyers and accountants that are a central part of all public offers. But there is nothing complex about the fundamentals of the case.

This morning some media is abuzz with news of an AUD700m settlement between ASIC and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, sometimes known as "CommBank" and sometimes as "CBA". CBA was first out of the stocks with its press release. Then AUSTRAC released the draft Order that will be put before the Court in settlement. What jumped out?

The Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) of the Singapore Police Force and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) advise the public to exercise extreme caution when dealing with unregulated online trading platforms. Has World Investors Stock Exchange (WISE) rebooted?

A scam-spam has been received from the fake internet domain WESTEMUNION.COM

(see update, below)

It's a stupid name: TSB is an acronym for Trustees Savings Bank and then some idiot, years ago, decided to add "Bank" to the acronym, in a move that rivals the equally stupid "ATM machine." But that's not the reason this heavy-duty spam-scam mailout is an obvious fraud. Warning: the content is highly plausible and the mail constructed to avoid even aggressive anti-spam filters.

Yesterday, we were supportive of Westpac in a case where adverse social reaction did not take account of the realities of the case. Today, they are getting a well deserved kicking from Beach, J in the Australian High Court. His Honour's language bordered in the intemperate in his obvious anger.

In Australia at present, there is a culture of attacking banks no matter what. Any handy stick can be used to beat them with. A case involving Westpac and a seriously ill disabled woman demonstrates that the craze has gone too far.

As the US bill to roll-back the Dodd-Frank reforms that were designed, amongst other things, to stabilise banks to protect them from failure is sent to the President, who promoted it, for signature, BankingInsuranceSecurities.com points out one statistic that might indicate how successful Dodd-Frank has been and why the changes increase the USA's risk profile.