Banks within Europe have a major role in the European financial system. The financial collapse in 2008 made regulators well aware of the importance of corporate transparency to allow stakeholders to assess the banks health and maintain a stable market. Risk reporting within the European Union (EU) contributes to transparency in terms of disclosing information on risk management activities. The heavy regulations and demand from investors have caused the extent of risk reports to increase over time. The purpose of this research is to investigate if there is a relationship between the quantity of information in risk disclosures and the financial performance for banks in the EU and thus contribute with new knowledge to the field of finance, and increase managers' as well as stakeholders' understanding of the impact of risk reports. The methodological standpoints guide our choices throughout the research process. Our epistemological view is positivism and our ontological view is objectivism. A deductive research approach and a quantitative research method are adopted to collect archival data from risk reports and on financial performance from a sample of 41 banks. Our population consist of banks within the EU. The research design is cross-sectional using data from one point in time, the time period 2013-04-01 - 2014-03-31. Based on relevant theories and previous research, quantity proxies in terms of number of pages, words, characters and recurrence of keywords together with financial performance measures in terms of stock return, standard deviation and beta are used to investigate the relationship. 3 hypotheses are derived and tested by running regressions where the financial performance measures are the dependent variables and our proxies for quality are the independent variables. Our tests show that no significant relationship exists between the quantity of information in risk disclosures and the financial performance of banks within the EU. The results from our research contribute with new knowledge to academics within the field of finance by increasing the understanding of the explanatory variables for financial performance. Moreover, academics may use our results to justify the choice of other proxies than quantity when investigating quality in corporate disclosures. Additionally, our results indicate that practitioners should not use quantity of information in risk reports as an indicator of quality, as no relationship with the financial performance of a bank could be statistically proven.

Magister Scientiae (Medical Bioscience) - MSc(MBS) / Background: Veterinary medicines play an imperative role in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of animal diseases. Many veterinary stock remedies in South Africa are available to the public without the intervention or supervision of a veterinarian or healthcare worker. Therefore, the accompanying package insert with product information and directions for use is central in promoting the safe and effective use of stock remedies. Information such as the dosage, warnings, precautions and storage instructions are essential to assist the user in their treatment decision-making. While local regulatory authority guidelines prescribe and control the minimum information that should be available in the package insert or product label, it is questioned whether the information contained in package inserts of products on the market complies with these regulatory requirements. Methodology: Using simple random sampling of veterinary stock remedies, 159 package inserts or product labels from various animal health companies were selected and evaluated against the prescribed labelling guidelines of the local regulatory authority responsible for the registration and control of stock remedies. The contents of each package insert or label in the sample were assessed for the presence of the prescribed information statements and were accordingly classified as non-compliant, partially compliant or compliant. Results: Among the 159 package inserts, 48 were for antimicrobials, 49 for ectoparasiticides, 44 for anthelmintics and the remaining 18 for endectocides. It was observed that none of the package inserts met all of the criteria and that the package inserts were inadequate in many aspects. The average percentage of compliance was 69.43%, with a range of 36.21% to 87.93%. Conclusion: The study indicated that many package inserts do not fully comply with the prescribed regulatory guidelines and that information related to the safe and appropriate use of stock remedies is insufficient.

Since information technology has become a central part of businesses and organizations, the move to the cyber domain has benefitted them and endangered them with new threats through vulnerabilities. To minimize risks and prevent and alleviate cyber-attacks, using standards is common to ensure an organization's cybersecurity. With this increased focus on cybersecurity, new legal and regulatory requirements are created and published, mandatory for organizations to comply with. However, even if one is certified with a cybersecurity standard and complies with necessary legal and regulatory requirements, security breaches do occur, and mitigating vulnerabilities cannot be fully accomplished. With this, ontologies have increased in popularity to visualize and simplify how multiple entities within the domain are interconnected. However, none has interconnected vulnerabilities, standards, legal and regulatory requirements in one and studies propose new, unifying ontologies to be created to aid the domain in building new knowledge. Thus, this study aims to develop a security ontology to understand the relationship between vulnerabilities, standards, legal and regulatory requirements. The research question is written as: What is the relationship between vulnerabilities, standards, legal and regulatory requirements? Design science methodology is applied to the study, in which data is collected through document study and interviews and analyzed using document and content analysis. Based on the data collected, a security ontology presenting and visualizing the relationships between the different subjects implemented has been created. The artefact can be useful for security practitioners and newcomers to more in-depth understanding of how vulnerabilities are connected to controls and which controls can aid in being compliant with legal and regulatory requirements.

The aim of this master thesis is analyze the impact of new regulatory requirements for market risk in terms of internal approach of the selected portfolio. The first part deals with the definition and calculation methods of risk measures Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall. Furthermore, this part is dedicated to model backtesting and determination of the stress period. The second part describes the development of Basel I-III regulatory requirements for market risk with a focus on internal approaches. The third part focuses on the calculation and subsequent analysis of current and new regulatory reguirements for market risk using the historical simulation method, variance and covariance method and Monte Carlo simulation.

It has been widely accepted that the banking industry is highly dependent on information technology (IT). Due to its pervasiveness and intertwining nature in most aspects of banking business, IT has also significantly become one of the critical components that facilitate the ability of banking institutions to meet regulatory requirements in an efficient and a cost-effective way. For instance, in the effort to mitigate the activities of money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF), various information on banking customers are timely and accurately gathered and analysed through automation. Furthermore, in many instances, IT systems exclusively built to achieve a similar objective are frequently established, and comparable to most IT implementations in the banking institutions, they are often can be equally regarded as a significant investment as well. Viewed from the longstanding debate on the value of IT investments to organisations, empirical research within the IS domain seemed to have placed less emphasis on the possible contribution of regulatory IT implementations. While it is easy to conceive that these IT deployments were never intended to directly benefit banking business from the outset, a study from this perspective should not be disregarded, but instead, warrant to be equally explored. The rationale for this statement can be attributed to the aforementioned assertion regarding the potentially substantial monetary investments required. In addition to this, it may also be due to the high tendency of stringent regulations being enforced in the future, and hence, could inevitably place a significant demand on organisational resources, and further influence their associated opportunity costs. For that reason, this study has attempted to fill the identified research gaps by conducting an investigation from the standpoint of a topical issue regarding anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AML/CFT) implementation efforts within banking institutions. Utilising a conceptual framework that leverages the resource-based view (RBV) to structurally analyse a list of research objectives, empirical evidence of business benefits and the associated capabilities through organisational AML/CFT efforts have indeed been discovered. The benefits are particularly in the form of having the opportunity to leverage various information and infrastructure that were established for regulatory purposes. Further evidence has also suggested that selected AML/CFT alerts have the potential of providing unique opportunity for the organisation to trigger time-critical event-based marketing activities, resulting in a possible improved competitive positioning (ICP). Importantly, by appreciating the insights obtained through the research, a conceptual framework is proposed, which may aid to structurally assess the possible benefits of any organisational regulatory IT implementations.

Le monde économique connaît actuellement un large mouvement de réglementation afin de stabiliser la finance et de renforcer la surveillance des activités bancaires à travers le nouveau dispositif de Bâle. Ce dernier est au centre du débat actuel sur les besoins de financement de l’économie dans le cadre de la crise actuelle et ses effets sur le financement de l’économie. En effet, les pays développés ont connu un credit crunch à la suite de la crise des subprimes et du renforcement de la réglementation des activités bancaires. Dans ce cadre, nous nous intéressons aux effets du nouveau cadre réglementaire et de son application dans les pays développés, où sont implantées les banques internationales, sur leurs flux bancaires vers les pays émergents qui ont déjà connu de grandes crises dues à la nature volatile de leur financement extérieur. Les résultats apportés dans le cadre de cette thèse montrent que la réglementation basée sur les pondérations aux risques affecte le volume, la structure et la volatilité de ces flux. En effet, vu l’importance des flux bancaires dans le financement des pays émergents et vu le renforcement des exigences réglementaires dans le contexte de la crise, la modification des possibilités d’arbitrage réglementaire a conduit à des modifications de la structure du financement externe des pays émergents avec la progression du financement obligataire au détriment du financement bancaire. Cette nouvelle structure, volatile et dépendant des cycles de marché, n’est pas sans conséquences sur la stabilité financière de ces pays trop sensible aux changements de financement externe, ce qui implique de nouveaux défis pour garantir la stabilité de ces pays émergents. / The economic world is now undergoing a large regulatory movement to stabilize finance and strengthen the supervision of banking activities through the new Basel agreement. This agreement is the focus of the current debate on the economy financing needs in the context of the recent crisis and its effects on the economy financing. Indeed, developed countries have recently experienced a credit crunch following the subprime crisis and strengthening the regulation of banking activities. In this context, we are interested in the effects of the new regulatory framework and its application in developed countries, where are headquarters of international banks, on their banking flows to emerging countries that have already experienced major crises due to the volatile nature of external financing. The results obtained in this thesis show that regulation based on risk weights affects the volume, structure and volatility of these flows. Indeed, given the importance of bank flows in the financing of emerging countries and given the strengthening of regulatory requirements in the context of the crisis, the change in regulatory arbitrage opportunities modifies the external financing structure of emerging countries with the evolution of bond financing instead of bank financing. This new external financing structure, volatile and depends on market cycles, is not without consequences for the financial stability of these countries, which remains very sensitive to changes in external financing, what implies new challenges to guarantee their stability.

The building sector accounts for approximately 40 percent of our energy use. To reach existing environmental targets energy use will have to be reduced in all building types. At the European level, the main legislative instrument for improving the energy efficiency of the building stock is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). The EPBD requires all member states to implement the directive in the building code and it also requires energy declarations to be performed at the building level. The first objective of this thesis is to describe energy use in shopping malls in Sweden and to suggest how this energy use can be reduced. The second objective is to determine whether current regulatory requirements are effective in promoting energy efficiency measures in Swedish shopping malls. Only limited background information was found from national energy statistics and scientific papers that deal specifically with energy use in shopping malls. The data available are difficult to analyse and compare due to inconsistencies in terminology regarding nomenclature and system boundaries. An improved terminology is presented in the thesis, with a distinction between organisationally and functionally divided energy, to facilitate future studies. Furthermore, when it comes to designing shopping malls and evaluating their energy use, correct input data are required. For calculations and simulations of energy demand in buildings, internal and external load patterns are important input data. The thesis provides occupancy, lighting and infiltration load data for shopping malls. Energy use in one shopping mall was investigated in detail and resulted in a validated calculation model for the prediction of energy use. To develop the calculation model an iterative empirical-theoretical methodology was used. It involved cross-checking measured data, assumptions related to operational and technical data, and model calculation results. The calculation model was then used for a more general analysis of energy efficiency measures and an evaluation of regulatory requirements. The thesis illustrates how the current building code and energy declarations are implemented in shopping malls today together with associated strengths and weaknesses.

The text explores the multifaceted role of a compliance officer in the Liechtenstein financial market. Drawing parallels to Forrest Gump's life analogy, the compliance officer's routine is marked by unpredictability, earning them the reputation of either a business killer or an everyday hero. Their primary responsibility is ensuring that their company adheres to legal and regulatory requirements. The compliance officer is a vigilant source of information, staying abreast of law amendments, geopolitical developments, and fraud schemes. They act as a second line of defense, rigorously assessing business profiles and monitoring risks associated with client relationships. Additionally, compliance officers play roles as counselors/psychologists, subject matter experts, protectors, and liaisons with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The text emphasizes their liability for actions or inactions, citing examples of legal repercussions for non-compliance. Despite the challenges, the conclusion depicts compliance officers as everyday heroes contributing to the integrity of the financial industry in Liechtenstein.

The subject of this diploma thesis is managing credit risk in banks, as the most significant risk faced by banks. The aim of this work is to define the basic techniques, tools and methods that are used by banks to manage credit risk. The first part of this work focuses on defining these procedures and describes the entire process of credit risk management, from the definition of credit risk, describing credit strategy and policy, organizational structure, defining the most used credit risk mitigation tools to the regulatory requirements for credit risk management. The second part gives a more detailed view to credit risk measurement and evaluation and possibilities of credit risk hedging. Last part presents credit risk management in practise illustrated by the example of chosen bank.

Современная система нормирования тепловой защиты зданий в России является одной из передовых в мире, потому что СП 50.13330.2012 «Тепловая защита зданий» содержит нормируемые параметры и передовые методы их расчета, учитывающие все известные эффекты теплопереноса в ограждающих конструкциях. Методы нормирования, применяемые в Китае, являются самобытными и отличаются как от российских, так и от европейских. Нормируемые параметры, как и методы их расчета, в России и Китае различаются. Для их сравнения необходимо учитывать их принципиальные особенности. Как для российских, так и для китайских специалистов по тепловой защите зданий, является актуальным изучение и сравнение потребления энергии на отопление зданий, а также нормирование тепловой защиты зданий в КНР и России. Поэтому актуальным является исследование принципов сравнения как тепловой защиты, так и потребления энергии в здания. В работе проанализированы нормирование и расчет тепловой защиты и энергопотребления зданий в России и Китае. Показано, что сравнивать тепловую защиту отдельных ограждающих конструкций можно при помощи сравнения приведенных сопротивлений (или приведенных коэффициентов теплопередачи) ограждающих конструкций. Комплексную характеристику теплозащиты зданий сравнивать нельзя, поскольку она отсутствует в нормах Китая. Потребление энергии зданием (и энергосбережение) можно сравнивать при помощи удельных характеристик, определяющих тепловые потребности здания и климатических характеристик региона строительства. Приведенные в китайских нормах теплотехнические требования к ограждающим конструкциям и зданиям связаны с климатом региона строительства. Каждое из требований требует сопоставления с аналогичными требованиями российских норм. Выполненная, таким образом работа, позволит приблизиться к оптимальным решениям по нормированию тепловой защиты зданий. / The modern system of standardization of thermal protection of buildings in Russia is one of the most advanced in the world, because SP 50.13330.2012 “Thermal protection of buildings” contains standardized parameters and advanced methods for their calculation, considering all known effects of heat transfer in building envelopes. The rationing methods used in China are original and differ from both Russian and European ones. Standardized parameters, as well as methods for calculating them, differ in Russia and China. To compare them, it is necessary to consider their fundamental features. For both Russian and Chinese specialists in thermal protection of buildings, it is relevant to study and compare energy consumption for heating buildings, as well as standardization of thermal protection of buildings in China and Russia. Therefore, it is relevant to study the principles of comparison of both thermal protection and energy consumption in buildings. The work analyzes the standardization and calculation of thermal protection and energy consumption of buildings in Russia and China. It is shown that the thermal protection of individual enclosing structures can be compared by comparing the given resistances (or given heat transfer coefficients) of the enclosing structures. The comprehensive performance of thermal protection of buildings cannot be compared, since it is not included in Chinese standards. A building's energy consumption (and energy savings) can be compared using specific characteristics that determine the building's thermal needs and the climatic characteristics of the construction region. The thermal requirements for enclosing structures and buildings given in Chinese standards are related to the climate of the construction region. The thermal requirements for enclosing structures and buildings given in Chinese standards are related to the climate of the construction region. Each of the requirements requires comparison with similar requirements of Russian standards. The work completed in this way will allow us to get closer to optimal solutions for regulating the thermal protection of buildings.