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Shaping the future of finance

The Finanser’s Week: 15th June – 21st June 2009

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Here are our key stories of the week:

Bank of England raises concerns with ECB over T2S

Andrew Bailey, Executive Director of the Bank of England, posted a
letter to Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Member of the Executive Board of
the European Central Bank, on 8th June regarding the doubts the Bank
has about TARGET2 for Securities (T2S). The letter reads as follows ...

The Mobile Financial Future

There
are loads of discussions about mobile financial services right now,
with many mobile financial stories and case studies provided already:
ABSA, BBVA, Jibun Bank, FNB, M-PESA, MoBank and UMPay.  Now I can add a
bunch more because we recently held three meetings at the FSClub: the
first in Austria in April; then in London in May; and finally in Dublin
in June; and all about mobile financial services.

The Mobile Financial Present

Yesterday, I presented the second in a series of webinars.
The first presentation looked at Global Bank Trends generally; whilst
the second focused upon trends in mobile financial services, and covers
key developments in this space in Asia, Europe and the USA. 
You can watch and hear both hour-long webinars, or download and view
the presentations by clicking here.

Zurich's reports: worth a read

Stumbled
upon Zurich Financial Services reports section today, after seeing the
group's latest Risk Insight report which states that the number of
companies blaming supply chain problems for lower profits has more than
doubled in the last five years, while the number of countries falling
into the "supply chain vulnerability" bracket has risen by more than a
third.  Here's a selection of the other reports I liked the look of ...

Grieving ... and the US Banking Reforms

I was trying to think of the future of banking and a model for making
this work and finally found one based upon the work of Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross, who places grief into five states: denial, anger,
bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Surprisingly, the cycle of this crisis reflects these five states
almost exactly, culminating in yesterday's banking regulatory reforms,
announced by Barack Obama yesterday.

What does the internet think?

There's
a great little website called: "What does the internet think?"  It
looks for phrases like "I love" or "I hate" from Google and other
search engines about your search term, and then ranks them according to
whether the world thinks of your chosen search subject as positive or
negative.  As a result, you can find out how folks feel about anyone or
any subject.

Where's Wally?

Just
used a cash machine that uses plain English. For example, rather than
being a 'cash machine' or ''ATM', the bank refers to it as a
'Hole-in-the-Wall', and had this note on the screen …

What was it Reagan said?

Ronald
Reagan is widely quoted as saying: “There are three kinds of people in
the world – those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and
those who wonder what happened.”  
I have a new variation of this theme however: "There are three kinds of
people who use technology - those who love it, those who question it
and those who are amazed by it."

Fred Goodwin found in France

Nothing
like sensationalist news headlines, and nothing like our very own News
of the World who went on the hunt for Fred Goodwin ... and found him
hiding in the Cote d'Azur hills near Cannes in the South of France.

Michael Moore sticks the boot in

Michael
Moore, the humble, modest and mild-mannered Academy Award-winning
American filmmaker (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) is making a
new movie to be released on October 2nd.
Here's the trailer ...

Bird & Fortune, Part 3

John
Bird & John Fortune could make a living out of taking the michael
out of the banking industry. On Sunday night, they unleashed their
latest bit of fun, building on Parts One and Two:

And the biggest news stories of the week include:

G8 ministers endorse global financial regulation (Guardian)

Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation",
the US Treasury Department official document detailing the Obama
administration's plans to tighten regulatory oversight of the US
financial system (89 page pdf document)
President Obama sets out biggest overhaul of Wall Street in decades (Telegraph)
Senate quick to attack Geithner reforms (Financial Times)

Gordon Brown signs up to creation of new EU financial regulators (Telegraph)
Jubilant Sarkozy sees EU take powers over the City (Times)
Brown wins independence from European banking regulator (Guardian)

Groups have up to $1,000bn locked up in working capital (Financial Times)

Give us more clout at IMF, say BRIC nations (Independent)
Why Wealthy Nations Are Stiffing Africa (Time)

Africa pioneers mobile bank push (BBC)
First Direct's 
Social Media NewsRoom
 Live

For stories by date, click on the dates below:

  

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Chris Skinner Author Avatar

Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...

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