Financial services

Financial regulators in Europe have called on the Obama administration to speed up reform of its banking regulations to prevent the world's largest economy gaining an unfair advantage over counterparts.

Fund managers, IFAs and investors could be hit with huge costs after the US Senate passed laws forcing millions of people in funds holding US assets to make a declaration to the American tax authorities.

The Investment Management Association (IMA) is to scrap the existing definitions and names of the Managed sectors, renaming them Managed A-C and introducing a new sector, Managed D.

The Investment Management Association (IMA) has proposed scrapping the Active, Balanced and Cautious tags and merging the Absolute Return sector into a new managed sector, in its review of the Managed peer groups.

Innovation and competition are at the heart of the UK's vibrant and competitive fund management industry, which is second only to the US.

Asset managers may have to undertake a "root and branch" reassessment of business models amid a wave of European regulation set to trigger "huge upheaval", warns State Street.

Jon Pain, formerly managing director of the FSA, will join KPMG as a partner working in its regulatory practice.

China is cutting import tariffs and easing restrictions in an attempt to re-balance its trade policy, says US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Some of the biggest names in financial services, including Cazenove CEO Andrew Ross and Peter Hargreaves, are calling for a "full and independent" inquiry into the collapse of Keydata to ensure similar failures are avoided in the future.

The Investment Management Association (IMA) has confirmed it is leading efforts to shore up troubled Keydata-backer Lifemark, as part of a bid to recoup the fund management sector's £233m FSCS bill.