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The Morning Risk Report: BCG Puts New Protocols in Place After Crisis Over Gaza Work
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By Max Fillion | Dow Jones Risk Journal
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Good morning. Boston Consulting Group is naming a new chief risk officer and putting other client-selection protocols in place after months of controversy stemming from its work on an Israeli-backed aid-distribution initiative in Gaza.
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The hire: Amyn Merchant replaces Adam Farber in overseeing risk functions across the firm—three months after Farber and another senior partner stepped down from leadership roles over the firm’s involvement in the widely criticized Gaza initiative, BCG said Tuesday. Merchant, a three-decade veteran of the firm, will help implement the findings of a BCG-commissioned investigation into how the initially pro-bono project veered into what the firm called unauthorized work.
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New process: In recent weeks, BCG has formalized guidelines on how it will work with humanitarian groups going forward and set some restrictions on work in active conflict zones. Leaders inside the firm said they are also working to reinforce its evaluation and approval processes for social-impact work. “We are learning from the missteps that have happened,” BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
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Disastrous project: BCG last fall took on what was then a pro-bono project to help solve food-supply challenges in Gaza and ultimately led to the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Hundreds of Palestinians seeking supplies from the initiative were subsequently killed after troops fired toward crowds near the aid-distribution sites, according to local health authorities, and the Gaza work has spiraled into the most significant crisis in BCG’s roughly six-decade history.
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Other fallout: The firm later fired two other U.S. partners in BCG’s public sector defense and security practice, saying one of them had misrepresented the work and that both had continued it against BCG’s instructions. That work included a postwar financial model to voluntarily relocate Palestinians. Farber and the other senior partner who stepped down from their leadership roles in July remain as senior partners, focusing full-time on client work, the firm said.
Also: How a Pro Bono Project in Gaza Spiraled Into a Crisis for BCG
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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Data Management: Consent is the Key to Personalization
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While a tension may exist between creating a personalized user experience—which requires the collection of personal data—and customer privacy, the two can work hand in hand. Read More
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Tim Scott (R., S.C.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was among the senators who introduced the legislation. Photo: Getty Images
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Republicans introduce bill to increase BSA reporting thresholds.
A group of Senate Republicans introduced a bill to increase the thresholds for reporting transactions under the Bank Secrecy Act, a move that comes as Wall Street hopes for more regulatory easing, Mengqi Sun reports for Risk Journal.
The Streamlining Transaction Reporting and Ensuring Anti-Money Laundering Improvements for a New Era Act, or Streamline Act, would raise the threshold to $30,000 for when financial institutions must file a currency transaction report. Financial institutions are currently required to file a CTR with the U.S. Treasury Department when they process a transaction larger than $10,000.
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The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority said it will soon conduct anti-money laundering oversight for legal and accounting firms, Risk Journal reports.
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A Colorado-based company can ship to its subsidiaries in Asia again after the Bureau of Industry and Security confirmed it mistakenly put them on its Entity List.
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Lenders won't face penalties if they don’t give the Internal Revenue Service detailed information about which borrowers qualify for a tax break on auto-loan interest, the tax agency said Tuesday.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump before a joint press conference in Alaska in August. Jae C. Hong/AP
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Trump says Ukraine summit with Putin would be a ‘waste of time.’
President Trump said Tuesday that meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin would be a waste and that he would reveal his new thinking on the Ukraine war within two days.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time til I’ll see what happens,” he said Tuesday at the White House. Putin wants the war to end, he said, as does Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I think it’s going to end,” he said.
Trump’s statement came hours after the White House said it no longer had immediate plans for a summit between Trump and Putin. Last week, Trump announced that he would imminently meet with Putin in Budapest for a second meeting between the two leaders in as many months.
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Hamas released the bodies of two more Israeli hostages on Tuesday as the group and Israel came under increasing pressure from the U.S. to avoid escalation that could collapse the cease-fire in Gaza, according to Israeli and Arab officials.
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Cracker Barrel Chief Executive Julie Felss Masino said the company was trying to make its logo easier to see on highway billboards when a design change prompted fierce backlash this summer.
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The Trump administration is planning to release more than $3 billion in aid to U.S. farmers that had been frozen as a result of the government shutdown, as the agriculture sector grapples with the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs.
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Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader will visit Washington next month and meet President Trump in the Oval Office, people familiar with the matter said, capping a multiyear effort to restore his international standing with a trip that could lay the groundwork for an eventual deal to establish ties with Israel.
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The Trump administration plans to open up new lands for cattle ranching and support new beef processing plants as part of a broader effort to lower beef prices for consumers.
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Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress ended apartheid 31 years ago with a promise to build a prosperous future for Black South Africans. Instead, its signature affirmative-action policy has fostered a culture of corruption, critics say, and the party is quickly losing voters who are fed up with the country’s worsening economic stagnation.
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Atlanta is the epicenter of a national surge in rental-application fraud.
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Warner Bros. Discovery said it is exploring a potential sale of all or some of its media holdings, setting into motion a deal process that could reshape the entertainment industry.
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Colombia’s leader has suggested President Trump is a slave trader and compared him to Hitler. Most recently, President Gustavo Petro has taken aim at the Trump administration’s targeting of boats allegedly ferrying drugs to the U.S. Now he is the latest Latin American leader to face Trump’s wrath.
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Schools are trying to attract the limited pool of higher-end families, and High Point University is a blueprint.
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