Here are our key stories of the week:
- Robert Peston presents ...
- Stéphane Garelli presents ...
- Alistair Darling presents ...
- The total view on SEPA and the PSD
- Bank makes a billion
- This firm is full of it ...
- Winners in Capital Markets Tech
- The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble
- Weird Banking News
Robert Peston, the BBC’s lead reporter on the banks throughout this crisis, presented a discussion I attended the other night. Robert’s presentation was titled “The new capitalism: The cost of men behaving badly”. He presented under Chatham House rules, so the summary below is purely my spin on what he said and not his words.
Stéphane Garelli was the keynote at last week’s conference on payments. For those who are unaware, Stéphane made Davos what it is today and is a world authority on competitiveness. Interviewing Stéphane before his speech, I asked him what he thought we would be talking about this time next year? “Mass unemployment and hyper-inflation” was his answer. Then he said, as a result of inflationary forces, the stock markets
would see another major bull run and will rally back to record highs
soon enough. Here's the summary of the whole speech.
Alistair Darling, the UK Chancellor, was asked whether the UK
Government's ownership of the banks changed the banks' activities?
Here's what he said: "There are going to have to be some
changes in culture, and there are going to be changes in approach. The
banks cannot just imagine that after everything is over we can just go
back to business as usual." Read the whole speech here.
The total view on SEPA and the PSD
At the payments conference last week, a major theme was the Payment Services Directive (PSD) and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Here is a complete summary of all the presentations and comments made about their progress.
Like most of the banks, the Bank of England has made a bundle out of the credit spreads of the last six months. In fact, over a billion pounds of profit.
I hear all sorts of rumblings about Merrill Lynch's unhappiness with Bank of America. These two stories prove just how bad it is getting.
Winners in Capital Markets Tech
Inside Market Data and Inside Reference Data announced their Award winners for 2009, and we listed the winners here for those interested.
The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble
BBC
Radio 4 aired a fantastic 45 minute spoof play about the global
derivatives market last week, with Stephanie Flanders starring. The play was originally published as a short story in the Financial Times. Here's the script from the original for those interested.
Two video clips of amusing news stories about financial services and banking this week.
And the biggest news stories of the week include:
Credit crunch has ended, according to Ted and Libor (Times)
Tim Geithner to reform US financial regulation (Telegraph)
New credit card limitations in US
(BBC)
China is preparing for a world where the yuan trumps the dollar (Telegraph)
China has long way to go to dislodge dollar (Financial Times)
Blank exit is a sorry end to HBOS disaster (Telegraph)
HSBC warns branch network 'uneconomic' (Telegraph)
Citigroup looks to slash tech costs (Financial Times)
HP cuts jobs as profits fall 17% (BBC)
Trader banned for concealing $10m bet after long boozy lunch (Telegraph)
Lloyds boss's account drained by Barclays thief (Daily Mail)
For stories by date, click on the dates below:
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
