The biggest news stories of the week include ...
- IMF in 'radical' bank tax plans - BBC
- Brussels backs tougher US line on derivatives - Financial Times
- US to shine light on derivatives trading - The Telegraph
- Don’t fight us on bank reforms, Obama tells lions of
Wall Street - The Times - Wall St regulator charges Goldman Sachs with fraud -
The Independent - Goldman and SEC: The main arguments - Financial Times
- FSA begins investigation into Goldman fraud claims -
The Times - Senate sends for Fabrice Tourre, the banker at heart of
Goldman ‘fraud’ - The Times - Goldman's Blankfein to testify alongside trader - The Independent
- Dick Fuld: Lehman Brothers was ‘risk averse’ - The Times
- Visa buys Cybersource in e-commerce push - Financial Times
And our biggest stories of the week are ...
I should be in Bahrain this week chairing a conference, but have missed
it due to the volcanic ash across Europe. The theme of this year’s
conference is all around “innovation amidst regulation”,
with a number of technologies that we see as key to addressing the
regulatory and innovatory requirements of the 2010s. Specifically,
there are four technology areas handpicked for focus: Mobile Services; Social Media; Cloud Computing; and Low Latency. These four technology buckets are top of mind for 2010. What are
the implications?
Building on the World of Me post last week, I’ve just found out
how powerful the tools are that are at our disposal today. This is due to my efforts to be virtually at a conference in Bahrain which I cannot attend due to flights being grounded this week (Iceland has had a volcanic eruption).
Branches are dead, the future is social (Part
Two)
My keynote in Bahrain this week was going to be a variation
of the presentation. Due to being unable to fly to Bahrain, I made a video file for the conference. Here is that video.
PayPal,
Microsoft and Google's visions of the
future
Today seems to be a day about future trends. For example, I stumbled
across a great discussion and visualisation about the future of
the payments and the internet in videos made by PayPal and Microsoft,
along with this interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
I sometimes get unusual things in the email – no comments thanks
– such as the full post-conference write up of a cards and
commercial payments conference in the USA last month. This
included commentary on prepaid cards, einvoicing, commercial cards usage
and more, so I picked out the best quotes and notes that caught my attention.
Gamestation, a UK videogames firm, discovered that more than 88% of
the public
don't read the terms and conditions of a website before they make a
purchase online. As a result, they inserted a clause in their
terms and conditions stating that the customer grants the retailer the
right to 'claim their immortal soul' to see how many signed up
regardless.
Not the most diplomatic poster
Just spotted this poster on the London Underground and think it's probably not very diplomatic at the moment ...
Another item spotted whilst on the Underground this week, and this
one did make me laugh (although it shouldn't have) ...
Goldman Sachs ... or Sack Goldmans?
There are so many articles and analysis into Goldman Sachs
practices at the moment that I’m not going to write a lengthy analysis to add to all of
these, but have picked a few of the best articles at the end of this
blog entry. What I would like to say is that the
Goldman Sachs area of this blog shows that the SEC’s actions
announced last Friday could be easily anticipated.
I don’t know if any of you read the IMF report recommending two
new bank taxes. If you haven't, then I can recommend it, particularly for the detailed
charts outlining which of the G20 nations had the most and least
exposure to the crisis. Find out more about which nations are winning and losing.
A press release landed
in my inbox today with the title: "SWIFT's MT202 COV Led to More
Work, Data Quality Concerns - Dow Jones Survey". The release is all about a small survey by
Dow Jones of payments and compliance managers who say: "yes, MT202
COV is a pain".
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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...
