A French Bill on banking and Financial Regulation was registered with the Presidency of the “Assemblée Nationale” (the lower house of the French Parliament, the National Assembly) on December 16th 2009, and plans for the creation of a council on financial regulation and systemic risk.
In a letter to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Mr. Cox said that “soft-dollar arrangements create a conflict between a money manager and its clients, compromise a money manager’s fiduciary responsibility by inducing the manager to direct trades to broker-dealers that offer research the manager wants, instead of to the broker-dealer that could best execute the client’s transactions, and encourage overtrading of client portfolios in an effort to generate soft-dollar credits.”
FRANCAIS
Article: Commissions en nature: une pratique génératrice de conflits d'intérêts?
Dans une lettre adressée au Président de la Commission Bancaire du Sénat américain Christopher Dodd, M. Cox écrit que "les pratiques de commission en nature créent un conflit entre le gérant de portefeuille et ses clients ; compromettent la responsabilité fiduciaire du gérant de portefeuille en le conduisant à privilégier les courtiers en valeurs qui fournissent des recherches qui lui sont favorables, au lieu de préférer les courtiers en valeurs qui pourraient exécuter au mieux les transactions de ses clients ; et favorisent une démultiplication des transactions (overtrading) dans le portefeuille géré afin de générer des crédits provenant des accords de commission en nature."
GERMAN
Artikel: Soft-Dollar-Vereinbarungen: verursachen sie Interessenkonflikte?
In einer Brief am Vorsitzender der Bankenkommission des Senates der Vereinigten Staaten Christopher Dodd schreibt Herr Cox: "Soft-Dollar-Vereinbarungen verursache Konflikte zwischen dem Vermögensverwalter und seinen Kunden; Sie gefährden die Verantwortung des Vermögensverwalters, da sie stiften ihm dazu, Brokers zu günstigen, die für ihn vortheilhafte Ergebnisse haben können, anstatt diejenigen, die am besten die Transaktionen seinen Kunden erfüllen würden. Dazu noch fördern solche Vereinbarungen die Überspekulation in Kunden-Portfolios, da durch Soft-Dollar-Vereinbarungen der Vermögensverwalter Profit erzielen kann."
SPANISH
Arreglos de caja de ahorro común en dólares: ¿representan conflictos de intereses?
En una carta al presidente de la Comisión bancaria del Senado americano Christopher Dodd, M. Cox dijo que “los arreglos de caja de ahorro común en dólares crea conflictos entre el administrador del dinero y el cliente, comprometiendo la responsabilidad fiduciaria del administrador al inducir el administrador a privilegiar los agentes en valores que a cambio ofrecen servicios de investigación solicitados por el gerente, en vez de a aquel que está mejor dispuesto para ejecutar el trabajo y las transacciones de los clientes, lo cual motiva la multiplicación de las transacciones (overtrading) de los portafolios de los clientes en un esfuerzo de generar estos ahorros de común en dólares.”
The implementation of a joint service on Insurance, Banking, and Insurance within the ‘Autorité de Contrôle prudential – ACP’ (French Prudential Control Authority), raises questions as to the way in which the service will be coordinated with the ‘Autorité des marchés financiers – AMF’ (French financial markets authority’s) other activities. The signature of the agreement creating the new joint service was the occasion for Jean-Pierre Jouyet, President of the AMF, to clarify that this joint service’s principal goal is consumer protection. The coordination between the AMF and the ACP is intended to improve efficiency and credibility to further this goal.
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit strikes down a decision that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the American telecommunications regulation agency, had taken against an Internet service provider, on the grounds that the FCC is incompetent to impose the theory of network neutrality on Internet service providers.
Personal Data, as they are information, are Compliance Tools. They represent a precious resource for firms which must implement a vigilance plan in order to prevent corruption, money laundering or terrorism financing, for examples. It is the reason why personal data are the angular stone of "Compliance by design" systems. However, the use of these data cannot clear the firm of its simultaneous obligation to protect these same personal data, that is also a "monumental goal" of Compliance Law.
In order to be able to exploit these data in an objective of Compliance and protecting them in the same time, the digital firm Apple adopted for example new dispositions in order to the exploitation of the Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) integrated in the iPad and in the iPhone and broadly used by targeted advertising firms, is conditioned to the consumer's consent.
Facebook reacted to this new disposition explaining that such measures will restrict the access to data for advertisers who will suffer from that. Facebook suspects Apple to block the access to advertisers in order to develop its own advertising tool. Facebook guaranteed to advertisers who work with it that it will not take similar measures and that it will always favor consultation before decision making in order to concile sometimes divergent interests.
We can sleep and already make some remarks:
GDPR imposing to companies that they guarantee a minimal level of protection for personal data does not apply in the United-States. It is then possible that Apple acted through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), more than through legal obligation.
The mode of regulation used here is the "conversational regulation" theorized by Julia Black. Indeed, regulators let the forces in presence discuss.
This "conversational regulation" does not seem to be very efficient in this case and an intervention of administrative authorities or of judges could be justified via Competition Law, Regulation Law or Compliance Law, knowing that Competition Law will favor access right to information and Regulation or Compliance Law private life right.
The whole paradox of Compliance Law rests in the equilibrium between circulation of information and secret.
A "cookie", so named because its shape recalls the shape of the cake, allows a site to remember the tastes of the user through visits and purchases which he made and decide to reuse this information. A European directive decided to limit these practices, the English legislature has provided the obligation for sites to warn the user that connects that a cookie identifies him and agrees of this acquisition of personal information, the justification for the Act is the protection of personal information that a third party data protection may thus have without the consent of the person concerned.
The Act came into application in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2012. Some companies they say it technically inapplicable, both as relevant information to justify the application of the consent form and what form the consent of the user should take. They are more concerned because the entire device is subjected to penal sanctions.
In Estonia, State owns the company Levira Ltd., which operates telecommunications. Meanwhile, the Minister for Economic Affairs which assigns and manages the radio frequencies, numberings and ensures the functioning of the universal service. But a principle of regulation prohibits the cumulation by the state of the quality of regulator and the quality of operator. This is why the European Commission opened an infringement procedure to the right of the European Union against the Estonia 1 July 2012 and asked by a reasoned opinion, to separate clearly its two activities, to ensure the required impartiality attached to the exercise of the powers of regulation.
Like every year since the adoption of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) and especially its Office of the Whistleblowers (OWB) handed to the Congress of the United-States a report about the success of its program concerning whistleblowers, especially estimated with the amount of financial rewards granted to them during the year. This report especially presents the amount granted to whistleblowers, the quality of the collected information and the efficacy of SEC's whistleblowers' protection process.
If Americans condition the effectiveness of whistleblowing to the remuneration of whistleblowers, Europeans oppose the "ethical whistleblower" who shares information for the love of Law to the "bounty hunter" uniquely motivated by financial reward and favor the former to the later, as it is proven in the French Law Sapin II of 2016 (which do not propose financial reward to whistleblowers) or the British Public Interest Disclosure of 1998 (which just propose a financial compensation of the whistleblower's losses linked to whistleblowing).
However, American and European conceptions are not so far from each other. As United-States, Europe has a real care for legal effectivity, even if, because of their different legal traditions, Americans favor effectivity of rights while European favor effectivity of Law. If it places effectivity at the center of its preoccupations, Europe should conceive with less aversion the possibility to financially incite whistleblowers. Moreover, United-States and Europe share the same common willingness to protect whistleblowers and if rewarding would enable a better protection, then Europe should not reject it, as shows the recent declarations of the French Defenders of Rights. It is not excluded that both systems converges in a close future.
The FCC’s 2010 “open Internet” (net neutrality) order went into effect on November 20, 2011. Verizon Communications and Metro PCS have challenged the FCC Order in court, alleging that the FCC lacked statutory power to impose net neutrality rules in connection with Internet access services.
FRENCH
L’ordonnace 2010 de la FFC (le régulateur nord-américain des communications) "open Internet" est entrée en vigueur le 20 novembre 2011. Les sociétés Verizon Communications et Metro PCS ont contesté devant le juge cette ordonnance, alléguant quela FCCn’avait pasle pouvoir légald’imposer des règles sur la neutralité du net concernant l'accès aux services d'Internet.
