Our biggest stories of the past week are ...
Why transparency is
NOT the solution
We had a good debate this week about the future for multilateral
interchange fees (MIFs) amongst the card companies. The argument made for
change by regulators appears to boil down to that the card operators and
issuers are ripping off...
Why
is he still SIR James Crosby?
Two journalistic heavyweights - Patrick
Hosking in the Times and Financial Services Club friend Ian Fraser - have
highlighted a number of questions that the Treasury Select Committee should ask
Sir James Crosby, former Chief Executive of HBOS (now Lloyds), today.
TARGET2
for Securities [T2S] - the latest news
The ECB just released their latest
Quarterly Update Magazine and, as we have a plenary meeting of the Clearing
& Settlement Working Group next Tuesday, I thought you might be interested
in an update on T2S from the ECB.
Sexist Barclaycard
ad alienates customers
I've worked for
American firms during my main working life, just as we saw the rise of
political correctness (PC) and the PC-police. It got to the stage where you
couldn't even say "I like your new hairstyle", without falling...
UK P2P lending:
over a quarter of a billion pound business
Giles Andrews, Chief
Executive of Zopa, recently spoke at the Financial Services Club, London, and
has kindly provided me with his script and slides to share with y'all so, here
it is ... Thanks very much to Chris and Andy...
A Banking Union? You must be joking!
For the last decade,
I’ve been a fan of the Eurozone. It’s created a lot of business for many of us.
The Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP), the forty or more Directives, the
Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and all ... but there's now a clear reason to
see it isn't going to work
Mobile domination:
half of all Visa payments will be made by mobile in 2020
The Sunday Times had a
specially sponsored section on mobile business this weekend. The section gave
some interesting stats that are worth repeating (just in case you didn’t think
mobile payments is big business): 28.2 trillion messages will be sent...
The major general news stories of the past week include ...
Citigroup's
new chief cuts 11,000 jobs as 'logical next step' - The Independent
Citigroup, fresh from a boardroom tussle
that led to Vikram Pandit's ousting from the chief executive's chair, announced
11,000 redundancies today, a move that will cost the financial behemoth more
than $1bn (£620m).
Islamic
finance faces growth challenges - BBC
Islamic finance faces growth challenges
EU fails
to agree bank supervisor - BBC
EU finance ministers fail to reach
agreement on setting up a single supervisor for eurozone banks after a meeting
in Brussels.
Former
FSA chief Hector Sants in talks to join Deloitte - The Telegraph
Former FSA chief in talks to join
accountancy firm Deloitte as a partner less than six months after quitting
regulator.
HBOS
collapsed due to 'incompetence', admits former boss Sir James Crosby - The
Telegraph
HBOS collapsed because of
"incompetence" in the bank's corporate lending division, Sir James
Crosby, former chief executive, has admitted.
Banking
crisis 'bad as world war' - BBC
A top Bank of England official tells the
BBC the banking crisis has been as bad for the economy as a world war - and
bankers' pay should fall further.
HSBC to
start selling £25bn of toxic US debt - The Telegraph
HSBC is preparing its first sale of
sub-prime loans since the height of the financial crash, as Britain's largest
bank begins to off-load more than $40bn (£25bn) of toxic US debt it still holds
on its books.
French
bank governor Christian Noyer calls for City of London to be sidelined as
Europe's financial hub - The Telegraph
London should be stripped of its status as
Europe's main financial hub and sidelined to allow the eurozone to
"control" transactions within the 17-nation bloc, the governor of the
Bank of France has said.
RBS needs
10 years to return to private sector: Times - Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - It will take a decade to
fully return Royal Bank of Scotland to the private sector, the state-owned
lender has predicted, according to the UK's Times newspaper on Monday.
Fears of
failure for Bank lending scheme - The Independent
The Bank of England is poised to deliver
the first verdict on its flagship scheme to boost lending in the economy
tomorrow, amid growing fears of an early flop.
If you like the Finanser, check out the books of the blog: the Complete Banker Series
The Financial Services Club is sponsored by:
For details of sponsorship email us.
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...
