The biggest news stories of the week include ...
Davos 2010: More Bankers This Year at Davos, but Mood Remains Glum - New York Times
Bankers fight back against Obama - The Independent
Alistair Darling dismisses Obama plan to break up banks as ineffective - The Telegraph
Fed chief Bernanke gets second term - BBC
And our biggest stories of the week are ...
So
the iPad comes out. Guess what? Just as I bought an iPod, the iPod
Touch came out. Now, just as I buy the iPod Touch, the iPad comes out. It’s annoying 'cos I want one, but I just bought one. The wrong one. The old one. And what's even more annoying is the computer that crashes all the time.
Today
is the second birthday of SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs), which launched
on January 28th 2008 and has now achieved a 5.3% volume of total European credit transfer ... I had completely forgotten about this major milestone until Jonathan Williams, of Experian Payments, sent me this note ...
With so much hullabaloo about banker's bonus taxes, taxes on
liabilities, a return to narrow banking, the closure of leveraged prop
trading, bankers versus Obama, Sarkozy and Davos, you might miss a few
key changes in emphasis. For example, the one I bet you miss completely,
unless you're looking, is the speech of the Executive Director for
Financial Stability of the Bank of England. Andrew Haldane
suggested a radical change to banking regulations this week.
I mentioned a dinner which I chaired about remittances the other day, and the firm that organised the dinner sent me a white paper as a follow-up.
Does PR matter for financial firms?
Just
found a survey in my inbox today from Broadgate Mainland and the
Financial Services Forum. The survey asked 89 folks in mainly UK
financial services firms – 52 in PR and 31 marketers - about their
views on the measures for evaluating public relations.
Like everyone, I’m amazed by how much pure madness there is in
the markets right now. Not the madness of crowds, the madness of bankers
or the madness of investors. No, it’s the madness of politicians
and regulators. Most of it is a debate about Obama's plans to split proprietary trading
from mainstream banking.
Just had an enjoyable morning floating around the City and talking with
folks about MiFID 2. Now you may think that’s not so enjoyable,
but it has been interesting. For a while now, MiFID has been of concern
as it has not achieved what it set out to do, namely to improve trade
execution by providing guarantees of processing in terms of the best
price, cost, speed of processing. So what do the regulators nee to
focus upon as they redraft the Directive?
Interesting article on the guide to all things Europe today, Euractiv,
about the Payment Services Directive stating that the Directive
“has been transposed in all but 11 of the 31 EU/EEA
countries” but "favours banks and card companies over the
merchants, retailers and consumers who will be using the scheme.” The article isn't accurate, but does demonstrate that the PSD is moving
up the agenda.
And, in other news:
Social media and financial services
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Social Media in Finance. Click here to take the survey.
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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...
