The Finanser’s Week: 16th December – 22nd December 2019

The main blog headlines are …

Have Yourself a Merry FinTech Christmas

So it’s the holiday season and time for some time off. I’m back on January 6th 2020. The only thing I can say is … here’s to a fantastic 2020 … the year of Doing Digital.    “Stop what you are doing and read this …

The Eleven Things That Stood Out In 2019

At the end of every year I list the top 10 blog posts from The Finanser, to show what’s been of most interest.  Bearing in mind there are over 200 posts a year, these are the ones that really stand out. Like most years, this …

Big Government versus Big Tech

I write about a lot of things. Around three-quarters is focused on finance and technology, but the rest meanders around life, taxes, government, the economy, global trade, regulatory matters and more. All of these latter areas can probably be summed up right now as: INTERNET …

The Wild West of Crypto

I’ve written so much about the Wild West of Crypto that I’m kind of fed up with it but … here we go again. When bitcoin first appeared, I got into trouble. I kept saying that you cannot have money without government, and the libertarians …

Why is Open Banking so scary?

The UK implemented Open Banking in January 2018 and now, almost two years later, you would think it’s doing really well. This is why the momentum is building. The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) shared figures that show there are 49 million data sharing requests …

 

And the top news headlines this week are …

Bank of England deserves to be embarrassed about security breach - Guardian
FCA must now decide how serious breach really is – and who to blame No one has dug into the vaults of the Bank of England and pilfered a gold bar, but security breaches for a central bank in the 21st-century age of information do not come much worse than

The European Central Bank’s found a way to keep the digital euro private - Decrypt
Central bank digital currencies—cryptos issued by central banks of nation-states—are kind of scary.

YouTube's top earners: Eight-year-old Ryan tops list with $26m - BBC
Ryan's World is ranked number one for the second year in a row.

Another Credit Suisse senior manager was followed: NZZ - Reuters
Another senior Credit Suisse executive was followed over three days in February, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported, suggesting the shadowing of former wealth management boss Iqbal Khan was not an isolated incident as the Swiss bank has said.

‘Gutsy’ Scot in line to be first female boss of Citigroup - Financial Times
Jane Fraser’s promotion to president comes at critical juncture for Wall St bank

Banks have learnt their lesson on risk management - Financial Times
Cultural changes mean lenders will stay cautious despite looser US rules

Will the UK really turn into 'Singapore-on-Thames' after Brexit? - Guardian
There’s little pressure among UK banks for deregulation – instead, France could be a bigger threat The idea that London might have a post-Brexit future as a kind of deregulated “Singapore-on-Thames” is one of the more curious notions to have emerged in the three and a half years since the

Bank accidentally puts $37MILLION into woman's account - Daily Mail
Dallas resident Ruth Balloon, 35, checked her bank account earlier this week, and it had some extra money in it: an extra $37 million to be exact.

Meet the biggest bank you've never heard of - CNN
The $28 billion marriage of SunTrust and BB&T means those brands are getting slowly phased out after a combined 275 years of history.

UK regulators step up external probes of financial groups - Financial Times
Reviews rise for first time in 4 years amid money-laundering and white-collar crime fears