Finance Monthly January 2020 Edition

9 www.finance-monthly.com NEWS - MONTHLY ROUND-UP News You Can’t Afford to Miss FIAT CHRYSLER & PEUGEOT MERGER AGREED AT $50BN Board members of the two motor vehicle firms have finally agreed on a merger deal at $50 billion, becoming fourth- largest car manufacturing company in the world. Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Peugeot-owner PSA have officially signed the papers to join via a binding agreement for a 50/50 merger of stock. PSA shareholders are set to receive 1.742 shares in the new and merged com- pany, for each PSA share they already own. Vice versa, each FCA share- holder will receive 1 share of the new firm, for each FCA share they already hold. The deal will conclude in around 15 months, creat- ing a joint firm estimated at €170 billion in sales per year, or 8.7 million vehi- cles sold each year. As a consequence of the deal being struck, shares in PSA have risen 1.5% in Paris, whilst FCA stocks rose 0.3% in Milan. A joint statement clarified that this deal will allow both firms to “address the challenge of shaping the new era of sustainable mobility,” whilst saving the companies around €3.7bn a year. “Our merger is a huge opportunity to take a stronger position in the auto industry as we seek to master the transition to a world of clean, safe and sus- tainable mobility and to provide our customers with world-class products, technology, and services,” Carlos Tavares, Chairman of Peugeot-maker PSA, said in the joint statement. Moving forward, Tavares will take up the role as CEO of the merged com- pany for the next five years, taking a seat on the board. FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS RESPONSIBLE FOR 60%+ LEAKED DATA IN 2019 Bitglass recently released its 2019 Financial Breach Report: The Financial Ma- trix. The study found that only 6% of all breaches in 2019 were suffered by financial services firms. However, these breaches compromised significantly more records than those that occurred in other in- dustries. In total, more than 60% of all leaked records in 2019 were exposed by financial services organi- sations. This is at least partially due to the Capi- tal One mega breach, which compromised more than 100 million records. Despite this outlier, aver- age breaches in financial services companies still tend to be larger and more detrimental than other sectors’ breaches. Fortu- nately, they do occur less often. “Given that organisations in the financial services industry are entrusted with highly valuable, person- ally identifiable informa- tion (PII), they represent an attractive target for cy- bercriminals,” said Anurag Kahol, CTO of Bitglass. “Hacking and malware are leading the charge against financial services and the costs associated with breaches are grow- ing. Financial services organisations must get a handle on data breaches and adopt a proactive se- curity strategy if they are to properly protect data from an evolving variety of threats.” Hacking and Malware re- main the primary cause of data breaches in fi- nancial services at 74.5% (up slightly from 73.5% in 2018). Insider Threats grew from 2.9% in 2018 to 5.5% today, while Ac- cidental Disclosures in- creased from 14.7% to 18.2%. The cost per average breached record in finan- cial services ($210) has increased over the last few years and exceeds the per-breached-record cost of all other industries except healthcare ($429). For mega breaches, which affect approximately 100M or more individuals, the cost per breached record in financial services is now $388 – up from $350 in 2018. Many financial services organisations are still not taking proper steps to se- cure data in our modern cloud and BYOD environ- ment. Consequently, they are suffering from recur- ring breaches. For exam- ple, Capital One and Dis- cover each experienced their fourth significant data breach in 2019. The top three breaches of financial services firms in 2019 were suffered by Capital One Financial Corporation (106 million individuals), Centerstone Insurance and Financial Services (111,589), and Nassau Educators Fed- eral Credit Union (86,773).