Bank of England deputy governor Andrew Bailey has been appointed chief executive of the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority. The Independent reports that the chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Greg Medcraft, had been widely tipped for the job. Bailey has worked at the BoE for 30 years and some commentators question whether he will be tough enough dealing with bank misbehaviour. JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay US$1.4 billion in a settlement of claims accusing it of draining cash from Lehman Brothers at the time of the financial crisis, the BBC reports. JP Morgan was Lehman's main short-term lender during the period leading up to its collapse in 2008. Insurer Ambac accused it of contributing to Lehman's failure by demanding US$8.6 billion of collateral as credit markets tightened. A measure of default risk used by Moody's Investors Service over the risk of any of the Big Four Chinese banks defaulting receives a sympathetic review at CNBC. The default risks of Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China are no more than 1.5 per cent, and for some as little as 0.5 per cent, Samuel Malone, director of specialised modelling at Moody's Analytics, told the business news service. The default risk of the largest Chinese banks has risen since its historical lows in 2013 but remains below levels seen in the US before the financial crisis. The megabank with the highest risk score is the US$3.4 trillion Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Malone said. Shareholders in China's rural commercial banks have been offloading their stakes via online Chinese auction sites and other lightly regulated marketplaces. Until this month, an official freeze on initial public offerings in Shanghai and Shenzhen has trapped shareholders from divesting as valuations fall, the FT reports. The backdoor methods for cashing out of the banks reflects a new urgency among shareholders to exit exposure to the banks at the bottom of the pile, amid dwindling returns and mounting bad debt. Australian finance executive Mark Burrows has accepted an honorary role as senior adviser to the London based Climate Bonds Initiative. Burrows, managing director and vice chairman of global investment banking at Credit Suisse, has also been working on sustainable development with global financial institutions, and is a special advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. In 1992 Burrows was the joint author of a report that was arguably the foundation for the A$1.7 trillion Australian compulsory superannuation industry. He also led the development of Australia's national uniform corporate law and financial market regulation. Israeli web-based trading platform PrivatEquity.biz is looking to sign up financial institutions such as stock exchanges, investment banks and large banks in mature high-tech markets. The firm said in a media release that its program was aimed at "helping mature private, pre-IPO high-tech companies in receiving investments from both private and institutional investors in their region through a local secondary market web trading platform." The