Showing posts with label money laundering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money laundering. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Best Financial Modeling Courses in India


The field of Investment Banking deals with evaluation of financial standing of a firm, business or a company. This basically involves evaluating the net worth of a company so as to either create capital for the same, get into mergers with other firms or dabble into acquisitions. The very skill required to asses a company’s financial structure, is known as Financial Modeling.
Simply put, financial modeling is a process which draws up the strengths and weaknesses of a company in terms of finance. This process aims at the creation of a mathematical model, which reflects a firm’s financial accomplishments or pitfalls from the time of its inception. Every top notch company has certain assets, some variables as well as some financial value and can be weighed in order to calculate its net worth in the market.

Thus various firms have varied values depending upon their financial standing. A financial model can be any mathematical formula that is used to calculate or estimate the value of a firm under the umbrella of corporate finance. In other words, anything from just a simple calculation to a series of highbrow complex calculation falls under the banner of a financial model. The various types of financial models relied on range from the DCF analysis (discounted cash flow), mergers and acquisitions, enterprise value calculations, estimations, to financial statement modeling and dilution modeling. People working in the Investment Banking industry look at the skill of financial modeling as an asset to have.

There are quite a number of courses on financial modeling, sought out by those who want to make a career in the field of InvestmentBanking. This is one field which covers a vast array of subjects, thus learning becomes a continuous process and learning new modeling techniques is always looked forward to. These courses are offered both in the classroom formats as well as online formats. Although there is a tilt towards opting for online courses, as they provide students with the autonomy to pace themselves through the course.


Breaking Into Wall Street Premium Package

This course includes Excel and financial modeling fundamentals courses in addition to sections of DCF analysis, financial statement modeling, mergers and acquisitions. This course is crafted by senior investment bankers and managing dir
ectors of investment banking firms. This course although does not have an official usage, but can be treated as a refresher to all the comparable, which come under financial modeling.

Financial Modeling & Valuation Certification- Imarticus Learning

This course has comprehensive coverage of concepts of both Financial Modeling and Valuation and it comprises of concepts of core corporate finance like, modeling and forecasting, Equity, Enterprise, Three Financial Statements, Valuation in project Finance and others. The course focuses on real life business scenarios and takes up a methodology based approach coupled with its unique feature of mentor ship. Every student is assigned a mentor, a dedicated senior level industry professional, who guides the student through the course. At the end, students also receive the FMVC certification, which is industry endorsed and the optional CISI Corporate Finance Technical Foundations certification. Career assistance and a 24/7 access to the online portal, sets this course a class apart from the others.

This is one of the reasons why a lot of graduates from the background of Finance opt for this course, so as to level up in their Investment Banking Careers.  

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Money Laundering - Recent Scandals

Zenobia Sethna



There are significant negative effects of money laundering on economies, including undermining domestic capital formation, depressed growth, and diverting capital away from development. Strict global regulations such as USA Patriot Act, KYC norms, among others, require financial services organizations to implement money laundering programs to prevent and detect illegal activity. And while some have become more vigilant, the roster of big name banks that have been caught red handed in money laundering scandals in recent years, and consequently fined heavily, continues to defy logic.

HSBC: The bank was fined 1.9 billion USD in 2012 of failing to monitor more than 670 billion USD in wire transfers and over 9.4 USD billion in purchases of U.S. currency from HSBC Mexico, allowing for money laundering by drug cartels. The bank also violated US economic sanctions against Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba. The bank was also fined 43 million USD in 2015 to settle a Money Laundering settlement at its Swiss private bank

Bank of New York : In what came to be known as the Benex Scandal, Bank of New York laundered an estimated 7-9 billion USD when suspected links to the Russian ‘mafia’ deposited into “Benex Worldwide” accounts at the Bank of New York between 1996 and 2002. This money was then transferred to the accounts of several companies across Europe.

Standard Chartered : Fined 300 million USD in 2014 over lapses in its anti-money-laundering procedures. The bank was earlier penalized in 2012 for 340 million USD after it was accused of scheming with Iran to hide from US authorities billions of pounds worth of transactions.

BNP Paribas : Fined 8.9 billion USD in 2014 for concealing billions of dollars in transactions for clients in Sudan, Iran and Cuba in violation of U.S. sanctions. The penalty also included a year-long suspension of the bank’s ability to convert foreign currency into US dollars through its New York office. BNP used a network of banks in the Middle East, Europe and Africa to mask dollar-based transfers linked to Sudanese companies. Employees also got rid of information from wire transfers that could have exposed the identity of blacklisted countries.

Credit Suisse : Pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy charges in 2014 for, among other things, “assisting clients in using sham entities to hide undeclared accounts” and paid $2.8 billion to settle. Notably, this is one of the very rare instances in recent years when regulators have been able to extract a guilty plea from a financial giant.

Most recently, the leak of 11.5 million documents from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps clients hide financial assets, revealed that Swiss giant UBS created 1,100 offshore companies. Other big banks doing business with Mossack Fonseca included Société Générale (979 companies), the Royal Bank of Canada (378), Commerzbank (92), and Credit Suisse (1,105). While the global fight against offshore tax evasion and money laundering has strengthened in recent years, the system adapts cunningly, shifting money to what are at any given time the weakest links in the financial system.