BNP Paribas

• Each Tender Offer is contingent upon the satisfaction of certain conditions, including the completion of the Disposition on terms satisfactory to Ball.
• Ball reserves the right to amend, extend, terminate or waive any condition with respect to one Tender Offer without taking a similar action with respect to the other Tender Offer.
• BNP Paribas Securities Corp. and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC are serving as dealer managers in connection with the Tender Offers.
• Each Tender Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase made available to holders of the Notes.

• Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE: PIPR), is pleased to announce the hiring of Rich Steiner as managing director and head of global market structure and algorithmic trading strategies.
• In addition, Ashley Teti joins the firm as a director in equity algorithmic sales.
• We are thrilled to welcome Rich and Ashley to Piper Sandler,” said Lance Lonergan , head of global equity execution at Piper Sandler.
• Prior to joining Piper Sandler, Steiner worked for Royal Bank of Canada for 14 years in various equity roles.

• San Francisco, Feb. 14, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tradeshift , the B2B e-commerce and fintech platform, today announces that Iain Balchin has joined the company on a permanent basis as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
• Iain brings over 25 years of experience as a senior financial executive across various sectors, including fintech, financial services and wealth management.
• Iain will also join Tradeshift CEO James Stirk on the company’s board of directors.
• 'With over a million businesses using Tradeshift for transactions globally, there are substantial opportunities to expand monetisation across the Tradeshift network through embedded financial services and marketplace commerce capabilities.

• However, our latest research shows that even universally adopted sanctions can throw a spanner into the works of the global financial system for want of being enforced everywhere.
• Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much ink has been spilled over the sanctions on Russia.
• And since the late 1980s, there has been a shift toward imposing financial sanctions, which involve freezing assets and investments.

How sanctions impact lending

• Sanctions will impose extra compliance costs on a bank, as it must fulfill reporting requirements and undertake due diligence checks to ensure its transactions are legal.
• The bank will also have to factor in the litigation costs and the reputational risk involved if its due diligence should fail.
• We wanted to understand how these costs and risks alter lending decisions.

Location, location, location

• The data show how much each bank in Germany was lending in foreign countries from 2002 to 2015.
• Importantly, German banks are also required to record how much their foreign affiliates (branches and subsidiaries outside Germany) are lending in each country.

The importance of the Financial Action Task Force

• Founded in 1989, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), also known by its French name, Groupe d’action financière (GAFI), is an intergovernmental organisation that sets international standards to allow national authorities to go after illicit funds linked to money laundering, terrorism and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
• Our analysis showed that German bank affiliates located outside the FATF increased their positions in sanctioned countries by an average of 95% relative to German banks inside the FATF.

Levelling the playing field

• One key takeaway from this is that, regardless of whether it is the litigation risks or compliance costs that ultimately drive the decision to lend in sanctioned countries (or not), you don’t have a level playing field.
• Banks in locations with weaker standards for the integrity of the financial system seem to find lending in sanctioned countries more attractive.
• To guarantee a level playing field, it is also vital to make sure all countries effectively comply with these sanctions.

Grant of EUR 5000 from the French National Research Agency (ANR), “Investissements d’Avenir” (LabEx
Ecodec/ANR-11-LABX-0047). Deutsche Bundesbank (German central bank) provided on-site access to the database External Position Report and free accommodation on the premises of the central bank during the author’s research visits.