The biggest news stories of the week include:
Global economic outlook 2009/10 (Deutsche Bank, 71 page pdf)
Risk Management Lessons from the Global Banking Crisis of 2008 (New York Federal Reserve, 36 page pdf)
King and Brown in rift over whether to split the banks (Independent)
Obama's pay tsar to cut executive salaries by up to 90pc (Telegraph)
City bonuses will soar to £6bn, says thinktank (Guardian)
Chip and PIN security flaws (BBC's Money Box Radio Show)
And our key stories of the week include:
CGAP produced a recent survey
on Financial Access and found that there are 6.2 billion bank accounts
worldwide - more than one for every person on the planet - except that
70% of adults in developing countries do not use formal financial
services, or are unbanked, compared to 20% of those in developed
countries.
Microfinance in CEE is different ... or is it?
We had a good meeting of the Financial Services Club in
Vienna on Wednesday night for our Central & Eastern European (CEE)
Group. The focus of the meeting was microfinance, and was interesting because
talking of microfinance and microcredit in CEE is very different to
microfinance in Africa or other emerging economies. This is because it
is not so much community based, where a village or family borrow
together to finance farming or basket weaving, but more based upon
small loans to individuals and small to medium enterprises.
Business Management Middle East has published a fantastic infographic that takes the review of the Top 500 Financial Brands globally.Brand Finance's.
Dollars made from toilet paper
Great story in this month's Wired magazine about a counterfeiter who literally printed money using an inkjet printer and toilet paper.
I’ve attended quite a few conferences in the past month and
realise they explored four key themes: risk management, regulatory
reform, operational efficiency and innovation. Contemplating what each of these mean in practice makes you realise how
difficult a job banks have on their hands in their day-to-day management
and long-term strategy.
Prospect magazine has a column this month guessing who will be the next
EU tzar for financial services: “It seems inevitable that the Barroso II (European) Commission
will be less committed to the free market than Barroso I ... one
appointment he made five years ago has not served him well in
particular. Charlie McCreevy’s term as internal market
commissioner has been little short of disastrous." Who will be the next Commissioner for the Internal Markets?
Gordon Brown: “I am determined to end reckless banking”
In his weekly podcast, the Prime Minister dedicated this week's to the banks.
Sir Victor Blank on the Lloyds-HBOS merger
This month’s Management Today (MT) has an
interview with the exiting Chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, Sir Victor
Blank. The editorial of MT starts by saying: “nobody, least of all Sir
Victor Blank, wants to bring their career to an end labelled as a
value-destroying loser with poor judgement whose final foray was a
colossal balls-up.”
Last week’s FSClub debate on cloud computing suggested that it does represent potential for the future in terms of data storage. Nick Davies, chief technology officer for Lombard Risk Management,
suggested that a private cloud could be used for purposes such as
enterprise risk management and a public cloud could be used for
reference data storage. Of course, not everyone agreed.
The Corporate Executive Board Acquires TowerGroup
The
Corporate Executive Board (CEB) acquired TowerGroup last week. That's
interesting as, when I worked with TowerGroup they were owned by
Reuters. Reuters sold them to MasterCard and now MasterCard have sold
them to CEB.
Barclaycard contactless strikes again
Following on from their campaign using the waterslide to promote their contactless cards, Barclaycard strikes again. This time it was a surprise that popped out as I was looking through the shelves of our local newspaper shop.
The Financial Times have Bird & Fortune in a new skit, following on from the three posted here before.
This one's floating around on email at the moment and thought it worth sharing here ... two investment bankers are taking delivery of a new yacht.
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...
