MAGAZINE
March 2018 Issue
Financier Worldwide Magazine
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COVER STORY
Mitigating succession planning risk
Succession planning can create a long-term competitive advantage. Prudent companies continuously identify and evaluate prospective external and internal leadership talent, and benchmark that talent against their own criteria for success in the role...
FEATURES
M&A: capital considerations and financing techniques
Sourcing financial capital for any endeavour and in any economic climate can be a challenging affair – especially for those tasked with financing a mergers & acquisitions (M&A) transaction. In this space, no money equates to no deal. However...
Dealmaking has reached several unprecedented highs in recent years. As trade barriers have fallen, technology has improved and globalisation – though currently under threat by recent geopolitical developments – has taken hold, markets...
ESG climbs limited partners’ due diligence agenda
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are increasingly important to companies and their stakeholders, particularly in the private equity (PE) industry. “Over the last two years, we have seen a significant uptake in ESG data being analysed...
Words of wisdom: the role of the board in risk oversight
In a world where risk seems to lurk around every corner, companies are well advised to gain an insight of the risks they face by tapping the wisdom of the group of people that sit in and around the very top of their organisation: the board. The stock-in-trade...
Transparency in life sciences reporting
An arena which touches all our lives, life sciences is a ‘health and wealth’ sector of key strategic importance to national economies – one that does much to translate medical innovations into tangible benefits for all. That said, companies...
ROUNDTABLE
Managing digital disruption and transformation
THE PANELLISTS: Deborah Sherry, GE Digital Europe; Raj Samani, McAfee; Jonathan C. Trull, Microsoft; Thomas Kimner, SAS; and Khalid Fellahi, Western Union Digital.
Digital disruption is affecting all organisations, impacting not only how businesses use technology, but also how they drive innovation, organisational change and new cultural behaviours. One result of this seismic shift is the adoption of artificial intelligence...
SPECIAL REPORT
No business can operate without taking risks. These risks may be financial, organisational, operational, environmental, technological or political. Perhaps they are economic or strategic. Maybe they relate to compliance or health and safety...
FORUM: Managing financial crime risk and AML processes with technology
FW moderates a discussion on managing financial crime risk and AML processes with technology between Nick Parfitt at C6 Intelligence, Steven Beattie at EY, Khalil Maalouf at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Kevin Petrasic at White & Case.
Risk management – impact of increased regulatory risk
Eversheds Sutherland Financial institutions and businesses in the UK and the EU are some of the most heavily regulated in the world, for the purposes of anti-money laundering (AML) regimes and to prevent terrorists financing (TF), tax evasion and market abuse. A key...
The need for curated data for asset managers and institutional investors
Global Risk Management Advisors, Inc. In the last several years, there has been much hype in the media about the importance of ‘Big Data’ and how transformative it will be in producing efficiencies and facilitating better decision making for many businesses and institutions. However, in the...
The innovation of compliance insurance covering costly corporate investigations
Warth & Klein Grant Thornton AG Corporate criminal investigations can take years and sometimes cost hundreds of millions of dollars. There are lawyers, auditors, forensic accountants and others who need to be paid as they conduct the probe. The numbers, in some cases, are eye-popping...
Good risk management matters as much as brand building
Farrer & Co. Businesses rightly focus very heavily on building their brands. However, many businesses are less focused on planning ahead to deal with a crisis or major issue which can fundamentally weaken and even destroy its reputation, by damaging the trust...
Cyber attack – incident response communication
Allen & Overy Any organisation could be subject to a cyber attack. Last year’s ‘WannaCry’ and ‘Petrwrap/Petya’ attacks are the most prominent recent examples to have demonstrated once more that immediate action by companies subject to an attack is key...
Supply chain risk strategies every organisation must know
APICS Risk management traditionally resides within the finance function of an organisation due to its impact on the bottom line. However, many companies fail to separately assess supply chain risk, even though it is becoming a growing concern for those...
Managing the convergence of changing sanctions and the human rights and anti-corruption movements
Miller & Chevalier The challenge of keeping pace with the increased compliance burden posed by US and other sanctions regimes has heightened over the past year. New sanctions programmes have emerged; others have waxed or waned. Furthermore, sanctions tools...
Who owns the commitment to procurement integrity?
Procurement Integrity Consulting Services LLC EY’s 2016 Global Fraud Survey reported that of the 2825 global executives surveyed, nearly half (42 percent) were willing to justify unethical behaviour when under pressure to meet financial targets. The survey further reported that 10 percent would make...
AI in corporate foreign exchange hedging
Lucht Probst Associates Foreign exchange (FX) hedging is a complex and time-consuming endeavour for corporates. To come up with an optimal hedging decision, numerous parameters need to be accounted for. Aside from the market environment, a company’s business model...
To serve your community or sit in jail: is there any reward to this banking risk?
Clark Hill PLC US banks exist to provide financial services to the community they serve, be it local, statewide, regional or national. Bank charters are granted and continuously monitored by regulators to ensure that banks fulfil the needs of their communities...
DEALfront
mergers & acquisitions
Sanofi to buy Bioverativ for $11.6bn
Global life sciences firm Sanofi and Bioverativ Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on therapies for rare blood disorders, have entered into a definitive agreement under which Sanofi will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Bioverativ...
21st Century Fox’s proposed £11.7bn buyout of the 61 percent of Sky Plc that it does not currently own has been provisionally blocked by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as it is not in the public interest. The deal, which was...
private equity & venture capital
Silver Lake takes Blackhawk private in $3.5bn deal
Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc., a global financial technology company and a leader in prepaid gift, reward and incentive technologies and solutions, has announced that Silver Lake, a global leader in technology investing, and P2 Capital Partners...
PE sets fundraising record in 2017
2017 was a record year for private equity fundraising, according to a new report from Preqin. A record $453bn was raised across 921 funds, eclipsing the $414bn raised in 2007 from 1044 vehicles. One of the key drivers for the record year of fundraising...
bankruptcy & corporate restructuring
With debts of around £1.5bn – including a £600m pension deficit – UK multinational construction giant Carillion Plc entered liquidation in January, sparking a crisis in the nation’s construction industry and highlighting deficiencies in both the...
SunEdison emerges from Chapter 11
Almost two years after an $11bn debt forced it to file for bankruptcy protection, former renewable energy giant SunEdison Inc. has emerged from Chapter 11 as a newly-reorganised, privately-held company. However, as a result of the Chapter 11...
PROFESSIONALinsight
Fraud & Corruption
Walker Morris Payments are described as ‘push payments’ when the payer obtains the payee’s account details and instructs their bank to send, or ‘push’, money to it. A push payment fraud will therefore involve the fraudster somehow persuading the victim to...
Money, money everywhere and not a coin to seize
CorkerBinning ‘Dirty money’ is increasingly a target of law enforcement agencies across the developed world and the rise of cyber crime means that it is increasingly digitised rather than physical. This can make it much more difficult for prosecutors to trace or seize...
Intellectual Property
Patent monetisation in the 21st century
Prince Lobel Tye LLP The great US innovators of the 19th century pioneered the use of intellectual property as a business tool. They fought notorious ‘patent wars’ and created a secondary market in invention by licensing, trading, swapping, pooling and litigating their patents...
Sughrue Mion PLLC US patents have been challenged by inter partes review (IPR) at the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at an increasing rate since their creation by the America Invents Act in 2011. Patent owners often point to the ‘commercial success’...
The evolving cryptocurrency patent landscape: who is winning the race?
Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck, P.C. If the past is any indication of what is to come, those who invest in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, just to name a few, had better buckle-up. It is surely going to be a wild ride as more cryptocurrencies emerge and the growing...
Data Privacy
Why plugging the data skills gap is key to GDPR compliance
Jaywing Data skills are mandatory for today’s financial services (FS) firms attempting to build individually personalised customer relationships. These specialist skills are enabling firms to adopt the hottest trends in machine learning and predictive analytics...
Profiling and automated decisions executed by financial entities under the GDPR
Osborne Clarke Customer profiling has become the key data processing activity carried out by financial entities. It is essential for institutions to get to know their prospective customers and existing ones better. Profiling activities may be related to activities...
SPOTlight
Industrial policy and increasing protectionism add complexity to M&A transactions in Europe
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP Recent years have seen growing activity in the area of national industrial policy, in Europe and worldwide. This was accompanied by political developments heading in a protectionist direction. Foreign investment control regimes are in the process...
NPLs – the ongoing symptom of a failure to embrace the value of true turnaround
BM&T European Restructuring Solutions Ten years ago, as the financial crisis resulted in ever-tightening credit conditions and the European debt crisis first began to rear its ugly head, it was seemingly apparent that over-leveraged businesses would have to address underlying operational...
Non-UK group finance companies under attack
Slaughter and May Toward the end of 2017, the EU Commission announced its decision to open a state aid investigation into the group finance exemption (GFE) from the UK’s rules on the taxation of controlled foreign companies, stating that the GFE gives “some companies...
CONTRIBUTORS
Allen & Overy
APICS
BM&T European Restructuring Solutions
C6 Intelligence
Clark Hill PLC
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
CorkerBinning
Eversheds Sutherland
EY
Farrer & Co.
GE Digital Europe
Global Risk Management Advisors, Inc.
Jaywing
Lucht Probst Associates
McAfee
Microsoft
Miller & Chevalier
Osborne Clarke
Prince Lobel Tye LLP
Procurement Integrity Consulting Services LLC
Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck, P.C.
SAS
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Slaughter and May
Sughrue Mion PLLC
Walker Morris
Warth & Klein Grant Thornton AG
Western Union Digital
White & Case