Berkshire faces U.S. scrutiny on systemic risk: Bloomberg

January 24, 2014 Leave a comment

Berkshire faces U.S. scrutiny on systemic risk: Bloomberg
6:41pm EST
(Reuters) – The U.S. risk council is looking to determine whether Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could be systemically important, a tag that would subject it to stricter regulatory oversight, Bloomberg reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) study of Berkshire may not mean the panel is inclined to designate the Omaha, Nebraska-based company, Bloomberg said. (link.reuters.com/guh36v)
Berkshire was not immediately available to comment, while the U.S. Treasury declined to comment.
The council, led by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, is evaluating which non-bank financial companies could threaten financial stability if they were to fail, Bloomberg reported.
The council in July designated insurer American International Group (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), GE Capital (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Prudential Financial Inc (PRU.N: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) as systemically risky, thus bringing them under stricter regulatory oversight.
The risk council, which includes the heads of other financial regulatory agencies, is a relatively new federal body that is testing its powers under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
After a number of non-bank firms struggled during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, Dodd-Frank gave the regulatory council the power to identify potentially risky non-bank firms and regulate them more like banks.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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