All non-US private banks with branches in New York should bear in mind the latest policy statement from the local chief regulator.

All non-US private banks with branches
in New York should bear in mind the latest policy statement from the
local chief regulator.

Ben Lawsky, New York State's first
Superintendent of Financial Services who is often referred to as the
'heir of Elliot Spitzer', the discredited former New York State
attorney, has issued a four-point proclamation about his main
prosecuting policy. Two of the points are directly relevant to the
wealth management sector: he intends to use the full panoply of his
powers to bring the highest possible officials at the next
discredited private bank to book, in contrast with the Securities and
Exchange Commission which let all individuals at HSBC walk free last
December after the corporation signed a deferred prosecution
agreement; and he is searching for 'new legal tools' to force
regulators who are embedded at recalcitrant banks to do their jobs,
unlike the two staff-members of the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency who sat at that bank for two years while money-laundering
and terrorist finance took place all around them.

HSBC had to pay the largest ever fine
levied by regulators at the end of last year – a consolidated sum
of $1.9 billion which cost the group almost 19 days' worth of its
pre-tax profits. The OCC staff members ended up paying no penalties
at all, as did the OCC itself.