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It's hot news right now that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has filed a super-injunction to stop details coming out about his personal life in the press. The issue now is that everyone wants the super-injunction removed, with MPs threatening to make public and leak to the press…

Another aspect of trading that cropped up last week was the whole thing about trading psychologies. This was kicked off by one of the speakers, a Psychology Professor, exploring the psychology of trading. In his and many other studies, trading is very much akin to madness, with ‘the deal’ being linked to gambling, sex and worse. One of…

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about privacy and security over the past few weeks, as demonstrated by a range of blog entries: Will we ever have social security? Banks should advise customers on the do’s and don’ts of social networking Great identity theft infographic CNN – not news, but fraud How a cyber-security…

Standard & Poor's have been talking to me for a while now, and sent a note yesterday that is quite intriguing.  It's justifying their analysis of course, but when you think everyone goes on about credit rating agencies being at fault, we should sometimes pause to consider. Here's what the note says: Between 1981 and…

You may have seen the T-Mobile UK ads, where a flashmob arrive at Liverpool Street Station or Trafalgar Square, London, and start a song or greet passengers at Heathrow airport … brilliant. It's feelgood stuff, brings a smile to your face and is just, well, 21st century cool. So it's nice to see a bank…

Ernst & Young has just completed a massive survey of over 20,000 consumers worldwide to see what they think about their banks. Half of the consumers are from Europe, but the rest cover the globe with a strong showing in Latin America. The results are summarised in a 56-page report which you can download from…

Another day, another payments conference and this one is International Payments Summit 2011. Just had an interesting panel discussion with: Dr Michael Salmony of Equens; Dr Malte Krueger of the University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt; Bridget Taxy of De La Rue; and Ron Delnevo of Bank Machine; about the feasibility of a cashless society. We’ve…

This is just amazing and something that almost slipped under my radar somehow. Earlier this year, we were all waiting with bated breath for the leak of secret Bank of America emails via Wikileaks. It was going to be explosive stuff, but ended up being a damp squib and was sent out via a member…