Financial services: Commission outlines ways to strengthen the safety of derivatives markets (Europa)
Showdown as EU and UK battle over banks (Independent)
Government white paper paves way for City 'super-regulator' (Telegraph)
Myners attacks EU's hedge fund proposals (Independent)
EU attack on City of London is 'opportunistic' (Telegraph)
Review of the international role of the euro, a Report by the ECB
The challenges facing the G8 (BBC)
A 'bank anger' tour across the blogosphere (Wallet Pop)
And our key stories include:
Goldman Sachs admit 'market manipulation'
Unbelievable
developments in the States this week, ever since the story broke that
Goldman Sachs were suing a developer for using their algo programs
potentially for illegal matters and purposes. In the case, their
lawyer admits that the bank's programs can be used to manipulate the
markets. Oh dear ...
With half the world now able to access mobile telephones, the
remittances space is being re-engineered. But the focus on mobile
telephony is wrong, both in remittances and in the wider context of
person-to-person payments … it is how to get value from person to
person. Whether the transfer of value is via an agent, mobile telephone, card
or other service does not matter. Purely the accessibility to sending
value and receiving value.
It is timely to talk about this as it relates to the G8 Summit taking place in Italy this week. During the buildup to this meeting campaigners have been reminding the
leaders of their obligations to Africa. With this in mind, a key part of the G8 meeting will focus upon
remittances as this payments process has a critical role to play in the
health and wealth of Africa.
This week has been spent in a debate about clearing and settlement systems. I’ll post something with more depth later, but the conclusion is that
Europe is creating more risk by having too many clearing systems. The EU needs fewers CCPs to be effective. In fact, risk fragmentation across multiple clearing operations may
actually be creating more systemic risks that are poorly managed.
In preparation for this year’s SIBOS, the Financial Services Club is
launching a major PSD and SEPA survey of payments professionals vies of
SEPA and the PSD. The aim of the research survey is to provide an in-depth analysis,
comparison and contrast of the country-level transpositions of the PSD
and implementations of SEPA. In order to participate in the survey, which should take you less than ten minutes, just click here.
Banking and technology go hand-in-hand
It occurred to me today that many of the revolutions in banking have occurred as a result of technology change. For
example, the mainframe enabled back office automation of accounts to
support banks becoming national and international behemoths. Without
the power of the mainframe systems of the 1960s, Visa, MasterCard and
SWIFT would not exist today and the Head of Data Processing was the job
we all wanted.
Gossip about houses and mortgages
Interesting dinner last night with a bunch of guys involved in the housing markets. These are some of the UK's largest property lenders and managers. By way of example, one gentleman was telling me about his wealthy client with £100 million property portfolio ...
After the recent spat
between the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, and our Head
of the Treasury, Alistair Darling, it's no wonder that Mervyn took the
day off yesterday to sit behind Pete Sampras to watch the Wimbledon
four-hour final extravaganza between Roger Federed and Andy Roddick.
Nice email from NatWest today encouraging consumers to switch to paper-free banking.
Presenting a webinar yesterday, I spent a bit of time talking about Twitter in banking.
Nothing to do with banking but, after the week I've had, I cannot believe this report in today's papers ...
For news 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...
