The Finanser’s Week: 27th May – 2nd June 2013

Our biggest stories of
the past week are ...

Is the Governor of
the Bank of England lost at sea?

We have several national British Treasures: Buckingham
Palace, the Queen, the Houses of Parliament, Bruce Forsyth, Chicken Tikka
Masala; but a new one is bidding for glory. Sir Mervyn King, the outgoing
Governor of the Bank of England. A massive...

20 years of change
and the challenge is still the same

Twenty years ago, I was inspired by Mike Hammer and James
Champy’s book Re-engineering the Corporation to start a consulting practise in
business process re-engineering (BPR). I had just been made redundant from a
firm that automated office processes with...

How do you secure
yourself in an insecure world?

Just gave a presentation at the EFMA Conference this week on
online insecurity, exacerbated by mobile hacktivists. I'm quite pleased with
it, as it's newly refreshed material, so here it is. Efma, no one is safe,
290513 from Chris Skinner...

Do traders lack
diplomacy and tact?

Reinforcing the idea that traders in the City have no
diplomacy or tact, here's two adverts from online trading firm AvaTrade.  Their newest ad obviously forgot about
something called 9/11 and the one before this was banned for sexism.

There’s an elephant
in the room

There’s an elephant in the room. Isn’t that a lovely phrase?
It’s meant to say there’s something so big that’s in your sphere of business
(or life) that it can no longer be ignored. For Barack Obama, it’s terrorism.
For...

  
The major general news stories of the past week include ... 

Debit
sends cash tumbling - The Independent
The amount of cash used to make retail purchases has tumbled to an all-time
low, as consumers continue to step up their usage of debit cards.    
   

Paid
for current accounts may be next scandal, watchdog warns - The
Telegraph
Paid-for currents accounts could be the next bank mis-selling scandal as more
complain they cannot use the advertised perks.        

Lloyds
continues sale of private banks - The Telegraph
Lloyds Banking Group has sold two private banking businesses as the
state-backed lender continues to cut its international presence as part of its
turnaround plan.        

Digital
cash arrests cause 'pain' - BBC
A leading security expert says he has seen evidence that criminals are suffering
as a consequence of the Liberty Reserve arrests.

Does
Canadian money smell of maple syrup? - The Telegraph
Ahead of Mark Carney taking up the role of Bank of England governor, Canadians
have demanded to know whether their new banknotes have a secret smell of maple
syrup        

NatWest,
RBS and Ulster Bank apps hit by glitches - The Guardian
Latest IT problem for banking group sees customers getting error message when
logging on through apps

Single
bank watchdog becomes mammoth project for ECB - Reuters
The European Central Bank faces a race against time to set up a watchdog for
the euro zone's 6,000 banks and risks having an under-equipped team in place
when it begins the task in mid-2014.

HSBC
veteran Niall Booker to lead troubled Co-op bank - The Telegraph
The Co-operative Group has hired a former senior HSBC director to take charge
of its struggling banking arm.        

Bank
predicts Pingit demand surge - Express and Star
Barclays said it has already seen large spikes of activity over recent bank
holidays, with a 300% increase in people logging into its Pingit app over the
Easter and early May bank holidays compared with normal weekends.

The
bank account switching revolution - Yourmoney.com
Led by the Payments Council, a new, free-to-use Current Account Switch Service
will be launched that will make switching from one bank or building society to
another simpler, reliable and hassle-free.

 

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