Banking And Capital Markets Insight - November 2012

Background

Welcome to the November edition of Banking and Capital Markets Insight, which focuses on technical issues currently coming out of the banking, capital markets, securities and fund management arenas.

Key findings

Our articles cover the following diverse areas:

• Mark Kennedy and James Paul on the importance of drafting a clear Tax Policy to articulate the tax goals, standards, accountabilities and reporting, both internally and externally, of a financial services firm and to meet the governance expectations of regulators and tax authorities;
• Kush Patel on the International Accounting Standards Board's new 'general' hedge accounting model, which was issued in near final form in September 2012. The model introduces a principles based test for hedge effectiveness, which replaces the current 80-125 percent quantitative test, and a fair value alternative where firms economically only hedge the credit risk elements of transactions, where certain credit