| Literally, the act of complying with the rules and regulations of the relevant authorities. In the financial markets, compliance with the rules of the SEC (in the US) and FSA (in the UK) is a major issue for banks, brokers and fund managers. Companies have dedicated compliance staff whose job is to make sure that the procedures used in the company's operations follow the prescribed rules. Penalties for breach can be severe, both in pecuniary terms and in damage to reputation. Within banks, one of the jobs of the compliance officer is to make sure that people working in the broking department do not find out about deals being worked on by people in the corporate finance department. If they did, and they acted on that information by buying or selling shares, they would be in breach of insider dealing laws.
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