Any discussion of the regulatory landscape across the globe
is complicated by the dominance of U.S. regulators in the
statistics. Of the enforcement actions included in-scope of this
research, the U.S. had accounted for 95% of the penalty amounts
against firms and 80% against individuals. Equally, the U.S.
dominated the number of penalties issued globally, with 73% against
firms and 72% against individuals. Consequently, activity in the
U.S. drives the global trends observed and can obscure less obvious
changes taking place elsewhere.
One significant impact of this is that a slowdown in the
activity of the U.S. regulators last year compared to 2016 and 2015
looks like a global trend. The number of U.S. penalties issued
against both firms and individuals combined has fallen on average
by 34% since 2015.
