The Finanser’s Week: 15th February to 21st February 2010

The biggest news stories of the week include ...

• Top
  Earners
  Averaged $345 Million in 2007, IRS Says - Bloomberg
• Treasury will receive £1.5bn boost from bankers' tax
  - The Telegraph
• Barclays reports profits up 92% to £11.6 billion - The Independent
• Barclays hits customers with huge overdraft fee
  increases - The Independent
• Hank Paulson scorns Barack Obama's banking reforms -
  The Times
• Volcker Rule looks more like hype than future law -
  The Telegraph
• Shock as British deficit equals that of Greece - The Independent
• Bank logins targeted by global botnet: 74,000 PCs
  compromised - Silicon

And our biggest stories of the week are ...

For the past few weeks we've been analysing the inital and general
results from our social media survey. Almost 450 people responded to the
survey, including over 100 banks, and you can now download our
preliminary results.  Headline news?  74% of respondents said their use
of social media
will increase organisationally - e.g. in a business context - over the
next two years.  Only 1% said it would decrease!

The UK Banking Bill of 2009 resulted in a new regulation from the
Financial Services Authority (FSA) which rules that, from 31 December
2010, all financial firms must
provide a Single Customer View (SCV) of all accountholders. The European
Union has similar proposals for a similar Deposit
Guarantee Scheme, as does Australia (APRA’s proposed scheme,
Download DP-FCS-for-ADIs-Jan-2010) and the USA.  And yet, without action
on reference data, it is unlikely that any of
these regulatory changes will work.

Why latency is so important (and Goldman wins)

Working with Ancero, Bloomberg has compiled a
list of the best brokers using their global trade execution prices
between July 2008 and June 2009. This is an annual review, and shows
Goldman Sachs as the clear winner for brokers handling over $25 billion
in trades annually.

LSE's marketing gets desperate

I realise that the LSE has been challenged by the new MTFs like
Chi-X, which is why it has recently acquired Turquoise, but they are now taking advertising to new extremes ...

And the best Asian City to HQ your etrading is
...

Singapore
is
the best city in Asia to headquarter an electronic trading business
according to a two week opinion poll conducted at the AsiaEtrading.com
website. The result is no
surprise as Singapore has a low corporate tax rate of 18% (17% in 2010),
a high
standard of living, a great quality of life and wonderful weather all
year-round.

Are the Cayman Islands the bank’s main loophole?  I’ve come across questionable dealings by banks in the Cayman
Islands to avoid taxation three times this week.  First BCP in Portugal, then Barclays Bank and finallly the Nationwide
Building Society in the UK.  What's going on?

Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (AIG)

Just saw the folk group Show of Hands on the Beeb singing
their song Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (AIG) about ... yes,
you guessed it ... bankers!  Here are the lyrics and video.

A decade of bonuses

Great interactive graphic in today's Financial Times illustrating the trends
over the last decade in investment bankers' bonuses.  To get you
started, here's a quick comparison of 2000, 2005 and 2009.

Barclays bright star

Yesterday’s main story was Barclays and their results, with a
stonking £11.6 billion profit for 2009.  All anticipations
beforehand were that the bank would announce £10.3 to £11
billion ($16 to $17 billion) profits, so these results were fairly
stupendous.  This is particularly true when you remember that, just
a year ago, they almost went under thanks to the share shorters.  So what happened and how does the future look?

Numbers: First Direct UK versus eBank Japan

First Direct has: 3,200 staff; 1.16 million customer; 85%+ of customer contact is
electronic ...

"Greed is good ... and now it's legal"

Remember Gordon Gecko from Wall Street?  Well ... he's back!

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