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LONDON (Alliance News) - Standard Chartered PLC on Monday said it has made senior hires in three financial centres around the world, as the emerging markets bank intensifies its effort to get tough on financial crime.
London-listed Standard Chartered said it has made a trio of appointments under John Cusack, its global head of financial crime compliance and money laundering reporting officer, a move that comes just days after Chief Executive Bill Winters said that Standard Chartered wants to make a "meaningful and leading contribution to the global fight against financial crime".
The move is the latest in an effort to hire people who can help the bank to meet the expectations of authorities and regulators, and follows last week's appointment of Mark Smith, previously the chief risk officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa and global head of wholesale credit and traded risk at HSBC Bank PLC, part of HSBC Holdings PLC, as group chief risk officer. Smith is reporting directly to Winters, the ex-JP Morgan Chase & Co investment banker who succeeded Peter Sands as chief executive in June.
Standard Chartered said it has appointed Steve Munro, a former US military intelligence officer, as its new head of sanctions compliance. He will report directly to Cusack from New York.
Munro was previously global anti-money-laundering leader at GE Capital, where he worked with David Clark, who is joining Standard Chartered as its new head of financial crime compliance surveillance analysis and academy. Clark will be based in London, reporting to Markus Schulz, head of FCC controls, and was previously GE Capital's head of international financial crime compliance.
In Dubai, Carmel Speers, previously with JP Morgan Chase in UK, will become the head of financial crime compliance for the Middle East. Speers will report to Jeremy Trevis, regional head of legal and compliance for MENAP, and to David Howes, deputy head of financial crime compliance.
In addition, Standard Chartered said that Duncan Wales, who has been the group general counsel at interdealer broker ICAP PLC since 2008, will join the bank as the deputy to group general counsel David Fein, and will assist in managing the bank's legal affairs from its base in London.
Standard Chartered has been burdened with increased regulatory scrutiny since 2012, when it was fined USD667 million over US sanctions violations related to Iran and other countries. One condition of those settlements required Standard Chartered to appoint an independent monitor to assess its New York branch's Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering operations.
The bank was then fined USD300 million as part of a settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services, the US regulator that called for the bank to install the monitor, in August 2014, over deficiencies in its anti-money laundering transaction surveillance system in the New York branch. That system was separate from the bank's sanctions screening process. The monitor's stay was extended by a further two years, adding to the two agreed in the original agreement.
In December 2014, Standard Chartered agreed with the US Department of Justice and the District Attorney of New York to extend the original deferred prosecution agreement from 2012 until December 2017. That month, Standard Chartered created a board-level Financial Crime Risk Committee, giving it oversight of the group's financial crime compliance programme.
"The group recognises that its compliance with historical, current and future sanctions, as well as AML (anti-money laundering) and BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) requirements, and customer due diligence practices, not just in the US but throughout its footprint are and will remain a focus of the relevant authorities," Standard Chartered said in its half-yearly report last week.
Last week, Standard Chartered's half-yearly report showed that the bank's pretax profit amounted to USD2.10 billion in the six months to the end of June, compared with USD3.25 billion in the corresponding half of the prior year. The bank cut its interim dividend by half to 14.4 cents per share, as it mulls over whether it will need to raise capital from shareholders later this year, with the decision partly depending on its performance in upcoming Bank of England stress tests and its ability to generate capital organically.
New CEO Bill Winters pledged to improve returns, and said he will detail a "clear plan of action" by the end of the year.
Standard Chartered shares were down 1.9% at 909.30 pence on Monday morning.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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