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Bearing in mind that we have Financial Services Club Nordic Region, as I left the Stockholm meeting last week I picked up a fascinating book at the airport about the Nordic countries. Called The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth, it caught my attention with facts like Denmark actually has brothels with animals (seven percent…

The soon to launch TSB flotation was announced the other day to general silence. Who wants to buy into a bank or, rather, who wants to buy into a rebranded Lloyds bank? With Lloyds’ shares faring reasonably well these days, TSB is going to be an interesting operation. Running on Lloyds’ systems, it states that…

I wanted to give up talking about bankers being jailed, fined, sued and sanctioned, but during my investigations into background issues over this week's Credit Suisse fine, I stumbled across an article I had missed in Germany's Spiegel that is pretty interesting and crucial reading. As a result, I've decided to share this essential reading here….

Talking about job losses in the City reminded me of a comment a colleague made: "if we had delivered on all the headcount savings our bank has been promised from technology change, we would not have any staff in this bank anymore". Interesting and, during our conversation, I followed up with: "we never get the…

Talking about job losses in the City reminded me of a comment a colleague made: "if we had delivered on all the headcount savings our bank has been promised from technology change, we would not have any staff in this bank anymore". Interesting and, during our conversation, I followed up with: "we never get the…

After the announcement last week of job losses at Barclays, I was reflecting on this and two other news headlines. One from Reuters states that the boom time for trading has gone whilst the other, from the Financial Times, shows that traders are no longer what banks are looking for – instead they're hiring computer programmers. The…

Building upon yesterday’s blog about the Medici’s and the close relationship between religion and finance, there’s another close relationship that needs to be noted: finance and art. Obviously, artists cannot flourish without some benefactor and all the greatest art of history has been financed by Emperors, Kings, Dukes and bankers. However, it was the Medici’s…

Building upon yesterday’s blog about the Medici’s and the close relationship between religion and finance, there’s another close relationship that needs to be noted: finance and art. Obviously, artists cannot flourish without some benefactor and all the greatest art of history has been financed by Emperors, Kings, Dukes and bankers. However, it was the Medici’s…