The Finanser’s Week: 21st October – 27th October 2013

Our biggest stories of the past week are ... 

The Jester and the Bishop in the Courtroom of the Bank

To this day, I have a long-lasting memory of facilitating a bank’s board meeting which ended up with the CMO and CRO having a punch-up. # It was not a pretty sight, but it was all down to the CMO...

Square Cash: looks good but there's a catch

I finally got around to taking a good look at the Square cash announcement today. If you didn’t spot it, Square announced last week that you can send cash to anyone via email for free. All you need is to...

This bank branch is dead ... no it's not! It's, uh, resting ...

I’ve recently seen so many articles about branches and branch closures that it’s worth a blog post, just to keep up with the issue. The first thing that came out was the recent European Central Bank (ECB) data detailing bank...

Bank to the Future: the first crowdsourced investment bank

For some time now I’ve known Simon Dixon, the founder of Bank to the Future. Bank to the Future aims to be the first crowd sourced investment bank to make a serious dent in the way we look at banking....

Does anyone understand their money these days?

We sometimes forget how clued up we are in banking and finance. In fact, I wonder how often we step out of the world of banking and see things through the eyes of the customer. Very rarely I imagine, if...

  
The major general news stories of the past week include ...

Barclays looks to avoid bank bonus cap -
The
Telegraph
Barclays is considering a new remuneration policy to get round EU
rules limiting pay in the banking industry.        

Metro Bank: We could float - The
Independent
The first new bank to open on Britain’s high streets in more than
a century revealed yesterday that it is considering listing on the London Stock
Exchange.        

Co-op Group chairman becomes latest victim of crisis at
mutual's banking arm - The Telegraph
Len Wardle to stand down as ex-group chief executive Peter Marks
says he was only partly to blame for bank's woes.        

Muted start for bank switching plan - BBC
The number of consumers changing current account provider has
hardly changed pace during the first weeks of a new bank switching service.

The Mobile Wallet Wars of 2014 - Payments
News
Glenbrook's Russ Jones writes about the distinctions between
multi-merchant, general purpose wallets and merchant specific wallets and how
wallets might shape up in 2014. While the payments industry is running in
circles trying to figure

RBS shares tumble on break-up plans - The
Telegraph
Royal Bank of Scotland shares tumbled more than 5pc on news that
the Chancellor plans to break the state-backed lender into a "good
bank" and a "bad bank" within weeks, and on fears of costly
fines by the US authorities.        

Co-op to lose full control of bank - BBC
The head of the Co-op Group, Euan Sutherland, confirms that the
mutual organisation will lose overall control of the Co-op Bank as a result of
a rescue deal.

Lloyds gave £10m loan to Formula One's worst performer
before sale - The Telegraph
State-backed Lloyds Banking Group gave a £10m loan to Formula
One's worst-performing team, Marussia, before selling its stake    
   

Co-op Group to lose control of Co-op Bank
- BBC
Co-op Group's hopes of retaining control of Co-op Bank after its
rescue have been dashed by opposition from creditors, led by hedge funds.

All aboard for Europe's shrinking bank branch network
- Reuters
Banks have shut about 20,000 branches across Europe in the last
four years, including 5,500 last year and 7,200 in 2011, according to a Reuters
analysis of European Central Bank data.

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