Most of all, they must set the tone from the top - that profits do not come before right conduct. It said clients and customers of Falcon Bank are assured that the merchant bank here has the full support of its head office which is financially sound. Falcon Bank has been operating as a merchant bank in Singapore since August MAS conducted inspections on Falcon Bank in and The inspection found weaknesses in the bank's controls for client acceptance and transaction surveillance that led to breaches of AML requirements, said MAS.
But the inspection uncovered an even larger number of regulatory breaches as well as serious failings on the part of head office senior management and the Singapore branch manager. The former chairman misled and influenced the Singapore branch into processing the customer's unusually large transactions despite multiple red flags. Their interference was wrongful and egregious in nature, and contributed to substantial breaches of AML regulations.
Taking into account the totality of Falcon Bank's conduct, MAS' assessment is that the merchant bank will be unable to comply with these requirements and expectations going forward. Instead, the control lapses "relate to specific bank officers who failed to carry out their duties effectively", said MAS. There were deficiencies in the on-boarding of new accounts, weaknesses in corroborating the source of funds, inadequate scrutiny of customers' transactions and activities, and failure to file timely suspicious transaction reports, MAS added.
Join ST's Telegram channel here and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. We have been experiencing some problems with subscriber log-ins and apologise for the inconvenience caused. Until we resolve the issues, subscribers need not log in to access ST Digital articles. But a log-in is still required for our PDFs. Skip to main content. Competition done right drives down costs and incentivizes performance.
Private firms operating under government contracts have strong incentives to deliver on performance—after all, their bottom line would be negatively impacted by the cancellation of an existing contract or losing out to a competitor when that contract is subsequently re-bid. At its root competition promotes innovation, efficiency and greater effectiveness in serving the shifting demands of customers.
Oftentimes, this allows contractors to provide comparable or even superior wages and benefits while reducing service costs and improving service levels. One obvious place to start is examining what other local governments are doing. The International City-County Management Association ICMA conducts a survey of alternate service delivery by local governments every five years, measuring service delivery for 67 local services across more than 1, municipalities nationwide.
The survey shows that public delivery is the most common form of service delivery at 52 percent of all service delivery across all local governments on average see Figure 1.
Non-profit privatization is next at 5 percent, and franchises, subsidies and volunteers collectively account for less than 2 percent of service delivery, on average. Trends in levels of for-profit privatization and non-profit contracting have remained relatively steady over the last two decades though the survey would not capture the likely uptick in local government privatization in the wake of the recession and subsequent proliferation of state and local fiscal crises.
Table 1 shows the percentages of surveyed local governments using privatization across a range of public services. Among the most frequently privatized local government services are waste collection residential and commercial , waste disposal, vehicle fleet management, hospitals, vehicle towing, electric utilities, drug programs and emergency medical services.
Those services are just a start; one privatization expert at the City University of New York identified over city and county services that have been contracted out to private firms including for-profit and non-profit. This is but a partial list. This office. Offices of elected officials … and major decision-making jobs that set policy would never be privatized.
Sandy Springs, Georgia was the first. The contract value was just above half what the city traditionally was charged through taxes by Fulton County. The city maintains ownership of assets and maintains budget control by setting priorities and service levels. Meanwhile the contractor is responsible for staffing and all operations and services. We are thrilled with the way the contractors are performing.
The speed with which public works problems are addressed is remarkable. Sandy Springs recently successfully rolled out its own police and fire departments. Counting police and fire employees, the city of 90, has only total employees.
Nearby Roswell, a city of 85, has over 1, employees. Privatization is a complex subject, and one that is commonly misunderstood. Three of the most prevalent myths include:. Fact: Privatization is not the domain of any one political party or ideology. In the U. Fact: This myth involves a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of privatization—that government loses control of an asset or service once it is privatized since the public sector is no longer providing that service.
In well-structured privatization initiatives the government and taxpayers gain accountability. In fact, the legal foundation of a privatization initiative is a contract that spells out all of the responsibilities and performance expectations that the government partner will require of the contractor. No detail is too small for the contract. Any failure to meet the performance standards specified in the contract could expose the contractor to financial penalties, and in the worst-case scenario, termination of the contract.
So government never loses control—in fact, it can actually gain more control of outcomes—in well-crafted privatization arrangements. For example, state officials in Indiana have testified that they were able to require higher standards of performance from the concessionaire operating the Indiana Toll Road than the state itself could provide when it ran the road, precisely because they specified the standards they wanted in the contract and can now hold the concessionaire financially accountable for meeting them.
Fact: Privatization tends to encounter opposition from public employee unions who view it as a threat to their jobs and influence. Well-managed privatization initiatives need not put undue burden on public employees, however.
Comprehensive examinations of privatization initiatives have found that they tend to result in few, if any, layoffs—those not retained by the new contractor usually either retire early or shift to other public sector positions—and that public employees can actually benefit in the long term when hired on by contractors, as private companies often present greater opportunities for upward career advancement, training and continuing education, and pay commensurate with performance, for example.
Nevertheless, it is important that management communicate early and often with the public employee unions regarding privatization initiatives. In the event that city employee jobs are at risk, the city should develop a plan to manage public employee transitions.
As is the case in all types of contracting, privatization can be implemented well or can be implemented poorly. A successful privatization process will ensure transparency, accountability and the delivery of high-performance services through a strong, performance-based contract.
By using best practices and lessons learned from the experiences of other governments, the likelihood of achieving those results is greatly enhanced. Among them:. Traditional cities should not hesitate to ask these same questions regarding existing services. There have been several instances of governments moving toward this approach since Centennial, Colorado privatized all of its public works functions in Bonita Springs, Florida privatized all of its community development services planning, zoning, permitting, inspections and code enforcement that same year, and Pembroke Pines, Florida privatized its entire building and planning department in June Also, the state of Georgia signed a large-scale outsourcing contract for the management and maintenance of numerous secure-site facilities held by the Department of Corrections, Department of Juvenile Justice and Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Focus on building procurement and contract management expertise: Successful privatization initiatives require good contract negotiation, management and monitoring skills on the part of city managers. Staff must be properly trained in contracting best practices and, in particular, how to build specific service standards into agreements and monitor provider performance, in order to avoid possible ambiguities, misunderstandings and disputes. Establish a centralized procurement unit: Governments should maintain an expert team of procurement and competition officials to guide individual departments in developing their privatization initiatives.
In other words, undertaking a commercial activities inventory helps identify those areas in which government is engaged in the business of business, effectively competing against private sector business and undermining free enterprise and economic development. The results of commercial activity inventories can be illuminating, especially with regard to the extent to which some governments compete against private enterprise to provide services.
0コメント