Regulation

So we start the year as we mean to go on, with a bunch of MPs grilling a banker about bonuses, bailouts, lending and such like. Banker bashing 2011: same sheet, different day. This time it’s the turn of Bob Diamond, Chief Executive of Barclays Bank, to take the heat in front of the Treasury…

On Tuesday last week the House of Commons Treasury Committee took evidence from Eric Daniels, Group Chief Executive, and Helen Weir CBE, Group Executive Director, Retail, Lloyds Banking Group Stephen Hester, Group Chief Executive, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Benny Higgins, Chief Executive, Tesco Bank It makes for interesting viewing, although long – you can…

“Now then Brasher, what’s all this I hear about a clampdown on bonuses?” Sir Winston Albert Grant, Chairman of MegaBank Corp (MBC) and generally known by his colleagues as WAG, roared across the table at Roger Hughes, the new Chief Compliance Officer for MBC. Roger was called Brasher by WAG because every time he came…

I’m a little bit mature these days … some of you might even say old … but you realise you’re getting on when something looks like an antique and you realise that, when you first saw it, you thought it was the future. In my case, this would be the first mainframe I programmed. Way…

There’s a whole load of things we’re grappling with today, and not many people seem to know how to grapple with them well. There’s a challenge for example regarding definitions. Defining what is “systemically important” versus what is not. Defining what is “commercial trade” versus speculative. Defining appropriate levels of capital versus required levels of…

At the Euro Finance conference in Frankfurt this week was a stream all about transaction banking which yours truly attended. The great and the good of our transaction world were also in attendance, as demonstrated by this short list of speakers: Albert Lechner, Vorstand Zahlungsverkehr, Betriebs-Center für Banken AG, München Andreas Kaiser, Leiter Cashmanagement, Bayer…

I was thinking a lot about the recent news that the FSA has ordered all mobile telephone calls to be monitored for any trader or investment banker using a corporate mobile telephone. Great. It doesn’t seem like such a great idea though, as traders and bankers will just switch to personal mobiles or those of…