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Dec 14, 2011

Seasons Greetings 2012

Wishing you all the best for the holiday season from the Financial Services Club. In the context of a revival of fortunes in 2013 for the industry, see below …

Dec 14, 2011

Seasons Greetings 2012

Wishing you all the best for the holiday season from the Financial Services Club. In the context of a revival of fortunes in 2013 for the industry, see below …

Dec 6, 2011

UK banks pay £53.4 billion in taxes

Just got a press release that I would usually ignore … but this one's interesting. It's from Open Europe, a think tank, and says that the UK banking sector not only pays over £50 billion in taxes, but that the whole sector is in danger of being squashed by the EU. Here it is for…

Dec 6, 2011

UK banks pay £53.4 billion in taxes

Dec 5, 2011

The London Protest #OccupyLSX is useless

I’ve been down to the #OccupyLSX, or #OLSX for short, site several times. That’s the Occupy London Stock Exchange site for those not following them on twitter. They were inspired by the #OccupyWallStreet, or #OWS folks, who began protesting back in September. Our group is a similar rag, tag and bobtail amalgamation of disparate folks,…

Dec 5, 2011

The London Protest #OccupyLSX is useless

Nov 29, 2011

Banking is a land of extremes

There are evangelists and dogmatics across the banking spectrum. On the one hand, I have regular debates with mobile extremists who believe cash is dead; on the other, there are those who are still fighting to keep the cheque in existence, and even lobbying to bring back cheque guarantee cards (they were phased out in…

Nov 28, 2011

Product or solution: a breed apart

Just had an interesting chat with a couple of guys who provide sales development and account planning services to IT firms. The gist of their business is turning product sellers into solution sellers, a core stomping ground of mine and one which intrigues me as it's more relevant now than ever. I guess it’s like…

Nov 25, 2011

Should a bank be called a bank

After Richard Branson's Virgin Money successfully acquired Northern Rock, loads has been written about the takeover. Much has been negative, saying that the Chancellor did a bad deal and ‘gifting’ the bank to Virgin, losing £400 million in the process. A lot of other dialogue has been positive, saying that the Chancellor got fair value…

Nov 24, 2011

Risk is not a discipline, it’s an attitude

One of the panels at the trading technologies show that I chaired was all about pre- and post- trade risk, and the impact of real-time risk management. We were meant to talk about real-time risk, what it would mean, the ability to be able to see credit, market and liquidity risk across counterparties, asset classes…