The biggest news stories of the week include ...
- Eurozone edges closer to endgame as Greek contagion
hits Portugal - The Independent - Barack Obama loses first vote on bank bill - The Telegraph
- Testimony of Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein to the
Senate on April 27: the text in full - The
Telegraph - Detailed in emails, how Goldman lost a fortune and then
made it back - The Independent - Barclays vs Lehman: Clash of the titans - The Telegraph
- Lloyds gallops back into the black - The Telegraph
- Santander sails on despite concerns over Spanish debt
- The Independent - Deutsche profits hit €2.8bn after record return at
investment bank - The Independent - Nasdaq OMX to close European MTF - Financial Times
And our biggest stories of the week are ...
UK banks: over £1 trillion of maturing debt
Earlier this week Adrian Coles, Director-General of the Building Societies
Association, gave a fascinating presentation to the Financial
Services Club Scotland on the state of the UK's Building Societies
sector. The presentation didn't actually say too much about
Building Societies but was more of a reflection of where we are with the
mortgage and savings markets in the UK, and a sad story he told.
Do building societies have a future?
Great write-up by David Calder for the Caledonian Mercury of Monday
night's meeting in Edinburgh ...
Want to know the latest on SEPA?
If you're wondering what's happening with SEPA (the Single Euro
Payments Area) then this interview with Gilbert Lichter, Secretary
General of the Euro Banking Association (EBA) and CEO of EBA Clearing,
provides a good overview of the latest and greatest ...
And the best bank brand in the world is ...
Chinese
Fascinating report in the FT this week about Global Brands, with
the financial sector bouncing back the strongest of all. Considering banks had the worst results
ever last year and lost all brand momentum, it’s no surprise to
see they’ve bounced back this year, even beating 'Beer' as a sector for
brand improvements ...
So we had the third and final leadership debate last night before
the UK goes to the polls to vote for a hung Parliament (the most likely
result). The debate is between David Cameron for the Conservatives, Gordon Brown for Labour and Nick Clegg for the Liberal-Democrats. Now I’m not going to talk a lot about politics in this blog – it’s not
my place – but there was a big spat about banks last night.
Just back from a short haul flight to Spain. Reading the BA
Business Mag, I stumbled across this ... yes, it's Joseph Stiglitz: Poster Boy!
It fascinates me when we talk about ‘identity’ that we
always seem to think of identity management as being a single thing ...
but it’s not. First, there’s the use of identity for
identification; second for authentication; third, for verification; and
fourth for fulfilment. Then there are the many instances of
providing and proving identification: at a bank, at an airport or border
control, at a vehicle hire firm or other high cost rental, when opening
a telephone account or similar service, when picking up tickets for a
concert, etc. This is why there are so many identity solutions out
there.
We had a great session at the FSClub the other day, discussing the
views of the corporate client and their relationship with the bank with
a panel consisting of a representative for corporate treasurers; a
former head of treasury ops for a major technology vendor; and the head
of epayments for a large, global bank. The corporate treasury
representative kicked off the evening by discussing the key challenges
for a treasurer ...
Spanish Banks leading in innovation - now the iPad Bank
It surprises me how often I find Spanish banks surprise me.
First, BBVA launch the first really cool Bank 2.0 apps two years
ago. Then Caja Navarra launches a fantastic hybrid Zopa-Bank
styled P2P lending service. More recently, Santander created a
really interesting head office campus full of robots. And now
Banco Sabadell is one of the first, if not the first
bank, to launch an iPad banking service.
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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...
