The biggest news stories of the week include:
RBS chief Stephen Hester says there is no 'miracle cure' as bank slumps to £1bn loss (Telegraph)
Lloyds blames HBOS for £13.4bn debts (Guardian)
HSBC chairman Stephen Green says 'worst of crisis over'
(Telegraph)
Barclays' star bankers to get bonus bonanza (Times)
Goldman has record trading days (Financial Times)
Goldman Faces Inquiries on Pay and Derivatives (New York Times)
What's Behind High-Frequency Trading (Wall Street Journal)
Bank wants extra £50bn for 'fragile' economy (Independent)
EU braced for autumn showdown on financial regulation (Euractiv)
Was the Twitter DDoS attack Cyber Warfare? (Search Engine Journal)
And our key stories include:
UK banks give thanks for fair value accounting
The
UK banks announced their half year results this week (results are
provided at the end of this entry, as they are released). And the
results were good. Not great, but good.
Numbers, Part 14: Social media and banks
Banks
are starting to get into the idea of social media with Scotia Bank,
Bank of America and HSBC running small business community networks for
example, as well as some such as Wells Fargo pushing the envelope with
blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The usual question I then get
from other banks is: “does it make money?” This is the wrong question.
Bank teller foils holdup, nabs suspect — loses job
A Seattle bank teller who knocked a would-be robber to the ground on
Tuesday was fired from his job on Thursday. Jim Nicholson said he knew
he was breaking bank policy but wanted to stop the man before he hit
other banks.
Found a very interesting conversation about remittance strategies on
LinkedIn, where one banking consultant for the United Nations states
that, by a few tweaks to Oracle, you can save $1,000 a day in bank
fees and take STP rates from 34% to 99%.
It’s summer and we should feel relaxed. Instead I’m more wound up than ever. Why? Because my life is no longer mine to control. It all began on Saturday. I went to the cashpoint and the machine wouldn’t give me any cash. Even when I said ‘please’, it wouldn’t give me any cash. It all turned out to be a cunning plan by my bank to get me to open another account.
As Twitter is still a hot topic for some, there's a really interesting survey that has just been released by social media analytics firm Sysomos. After analysing
information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts in July, they discovered
that ...
There are more and more sites that are using visual tools to illustrate banks, the credit crisis and other trends. Mint is particularly good at doing this, and then I stumbled across Visual Economics.
A brief review of (Oz) bank twittering
For
some time, we've seen twitter emerge as a communications channel and
wondered what it means for banks. This morning, I gained a good
insight as I was alerted to some dialogue between UBank, a division of
the National Bank of Australia (NAB), and someone who made a comment
about them. It all began with this tweet from a chap called Simon ...
Cloud computing in banks
Our PSD and SEPA survey has now finished but another one has started. This one is all about cloud computing. Cloud computing is a hot topic and often on the agenda at conferences, so why isn't it being used around the banking centres of the world more? To find out, the Financial Services Club is running another brief survey about Cloud Computing: the reality.
One of the funniest quotes of the week is from David Cameron, Britain's Prime Minister in waiting. Talking about Twitter live on radio, he claims he didn't realise that "tw*t" is a swear word when he said that: "Too many twits might make a tw*t":
The quote caused an outcry.
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...
