Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Financial Action Task Force Report: Emerging Terrorist Financing Risks

This report highlights that understanding how a terrorist organisation manages its assets is critical to starving the organisation of funds and disrupting their activities in the long term. Terrorist organisations have different needs, depending on whether they are large, small, or simply constituted of a network of seemingly isolated individuals. The section on financial management explores the use of funds by terrorist organisations, not only for operational needs but also for propaganda, recruitment and training, and the techniques used to manage these funds, including allocating specialised financial roles. The report finds that authorities need to do further work to identify and target various entities responsible for these functions.

Financial Stability Board Global Shadow Banking Monitoring Report 2013

The shadow banking system can broadly be described as credit intermediation involving entities and activities outside the regular banking system. Intermediating credit through non-bank channels can have important advantages and contributes to the financing of the real economy, but such channels can also become a source of systemic risk, especially when they are structured to perform bank-like functions (e.g. maturity transformation and leverage) and when their interconnectedness with the regular banking system is strong. Therefore, appropriate monitoring of shadow banking helps to mitigate the build-up of such systemic risks. The FSB set out its approach for monitoring the global shadow banking system in its report to the G20 in October 2011. This report presents the results of the third annual monitoring exercise following this approach, using end-2012 data. The report includes data from 25 jurisdictions and the euro area as a whole, bringing the coverage of the monitoring exercise to about 80% of global GDP and 90% of global financial system assets.

OECD U.S. Banking Concentration and Security Note

In the United States, the federal antitrust laws generally apply to commercial banking and investment banking products and services in the same manner as to other economic sectors. Similarly, the Horizontal Merger Guidelines1 (Guidelines) of the U.S. Department of Justice (Department) and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission apply to the analysis of mergers across sectors. Premerger notifications relating to non-bank mergers in the financial sector are filed pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act2 and are analyzed under the Guidelines.

OECD U.S. Financial Regulatory Transparency Report

This submission provides an overview of the practices of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) (together, “the Agencies”) with regard to transparency and procedural fairness. Part I discusses transparency with respect to substantive standards and agency policies and procedures. Part II discusses open and frequent dialogue with the parties, and Part III addresses the closely related issue of informing parties of the allegations against them in a timely manner. Parts IV and V describe the opportunities that parties are given to respond to agency concerns and to be heard prior to an adverse decision. Part VI addresses the length of antitrust investigations, and Part VII summarizes the Agencies’ practice with regard to the publication of decisions.

OECD Analysis and Management of Nuclear Accidents Integrated Plan

The Working Group on the Analysis and Management of Accidents (WGAMA) shall be responsible for activities related to potential accidental situations in nuclear power plants, including the following technical areas: reactor coolant system thermal-hydraulics; design-basis accident including ECCS strainer clogging; pre-core melt conditions and progression of accident and in-vessel phenomena; coolability of over-heated cores; ex-vessel corium interaction with concrete and coolant; incontainment combustible gas control; physical-chemical behaviour of radioactive species in the containment; fire safety. The activities will mainly focus on existing reactors, but will also comprise applications for some advanced reactor designs.

OECD Annual Report on Competition Policy in Turkey 2008

In terms of enforcement of competition rules, the number of decisions taken increased in 2008 compared to the previous year. While the number of merger and exemption cases increased significantly, the number of cases in the area of competition infringements (cartels, vertical restraints and abusive practices) decreased. The increasing number of exemption applications is quite striking in 2008. The main explanation for this increase comes from the introduction of 40% market share threshold in the Block Exemption Communiqué on Vertical Agreements. The agreements previously exempted lost their exempted status after the introduction of the threshold.