A senior partner with KPMG has been charged that he passed market sensitive information to his friend, owner of a jewellery shop, and that they made an illicit profit of more than USD1.2 million. Shop owner Brian Shaw, 52, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to . Scott London, 50, is no longer with KPMG and is to plead not guilty.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched a new web service explaining internet banking security in HK and why, if users take a little care, HK's banking systems are very secure.

In 2006, when this newspaper (then under a different name) published warnings of an impending home loan crisis in the USA, no one listened. Indeed, some said it was nonsense. It wasn't. There were economic and commercial indicators. But one, the one that led us to the conclusion that a crash was inevitable, was due to a specific pattern of criminal behaviour which began to increase significantly some two years before the next most important indicator arose. That criminal behaviour is making a noticeable comeback. And this time it's targeting the elderly and vulnerable.

Jia Yao Mathew TAN has been sentenced for insider trading. He was a director of Active Capital Management, Sydney, Australia

An e-mail giving rise to suspicions of a pump and dump fraud / market manipulation in the shares of Nuvilex, Inc.

ASIC has suspended the Australian financial services (AFS) licence of LM Investment Management Limited (LM) for two years. The company is in administration which seems to make the question of suspension v revocation somewhat moot.

The UK has a history of implementing significant pieces of legislation on April Fool's Day. That was, for example, the day that it brought into effect the first version of The Money Laundering Regulations. Now the same day has seen the creation of a new system of regulation for the financial sector. And the idea of a single regulator is no more. Should we lament the Financial Services Authority or be pleased it's been scrapped?

Banks in Cyprus opened according to the repeatedly delayed schedule. And as expected, customers lined up. But they did not drain their accounts, much to the surprise of the industry.

It was a deal waiting to be done: Piraeus Bank had been plotting with Greek regulators to snaffle the mainland operations of Cypriot banks as the crisis deepened but that all came to a crashing halt when Cyprus suspended almost all banking operations and told the EU / IMF combine to get lost.