The main blog discussions this week include …
The youngsters bucking up the stock markets (that’s bucking with a ‘b’)
I was pretty surprised to find that many of Robinhood’s account holders are very young, with an average age of 31. It is probably why they pile into anti-Wall Street stock movements and they are not the only ones. See this from Reuters: Apex Clearing, …
Tom Blomfield on what purpose-driven banking means
I’m working on a new book project. You might have spotted the themes in my recent blog entries but, if not, it’s all about purpose. The tagline is: if you don’t stand for something, you fall down, and is focused upon stakeholder capitalism. ESG, CSR and all that stuff and …
UK regulator to crack down on Buy Now, Pay Later
It’s interesting that the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, came out with its review of the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) economy, and the media started comparing Klarna with Wonga. I’ve blogged in-depth about both in the past: Whatever you think, Wonga is doing …
Creating a level playing field for regulating FinTech
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) just released a paper on how governments and central banks should deal with FinTech upstarts. Here are the conclusions: Helping to achieve a level playing field in the provision of financial services is a desired outcome of the regulatory …
How getting a bank statement became a big deal
I have been involved in a number of small businesses that have started up over the past twenty years: The Financial Services Club, The Finanser, The Portrait Foundation; as well as some that are bigger: 11FS. Interestingly, every start-up I’ve been involved with has had …
Unless you were hiding under a rock last week, you must have noticed the Gamestop story. In case it left you bemused, Simon Taylor of 11FS gives a great breakdown of what happened. Over to you Simon … How Robinhood weaponized the Occupy Wall Street …
And the main news headlines are …
Trump Banker’s Deutsche Bank Exit Prompted by Property Deal - Bloomberg
Rosemary Vrablic, the longtime banker for Donald Trump, left Deutsche Bank AG in December after an internal investigation found she engaged in “undisclosed activities” related to a real estate deal.Vrablic was “permitted to resign” as a result of the probe ...
White boys' club? New tales from the City - BBC
Hedonistic, ruthless and elitist. That's how the financial industry has usually been portrayed on screen, but how true to life is this?
An equivalence ‘deal’ for the City and EU is doomed to fail - Financial Times
A binding treaty on financial services is needed instead if Europe and the UK are to prosper post-Brexit
Sir Simon Robey: the accidental banker adding George Osborne to the fold - Guardian
The co-founder of Robey Warshaw has been described as the City’s ‘trillion dollar man’ and is an old friend of the former UK chancellor Sir Simon Robey had his career planned out. He wanted to become a professional opera singer and his dream was to sing on stage at the
Why US neobanks thrived while Europeans lost steam - Financial Times
The US neobank market has some inherent advantages compared to any single European country
Former chancellor George Osborne to become full-time banker - Guardian
Former Tory MP is dropping nearly all current jobs to work at investment bank Robey Warshaw George Osborne, the former chancellor who orchestrated the austerity drive after the financial crisis, is dropping his portfolio career to become a full-time banker. Osborne announced on Monday that he is giving up nearly
Brexit: How much disruption has there been so far? - BBC
It has been a month since the rules changed in the UK's relationship with the EU.
Monzo founder on the pressures of running a digital bank - The Guardian
Tom Blomfield was not prepared for the stress that the Covid-19 crisis would unleash on the banking sector and his own mental health. The 35-year-old Monzo founder was already struggling to meet the daily demands of running a digital bank that had grown to nearly 5 million customers and had become a success story for Britain’s fintech sector.
Lenders struggle for positives as Bank of England ponders negative rates move - The Telegraph
Just at the dawn of the Covid era last March before taking up the Bank of England reins, a forthright Andrew Bailey told MPs that negative interest rates were not a “plausible tool”.
An uprising against Wall Street? Hardly. GameStop was about the absurdity of the stock market | Kenan Malik - Guardian
The financial titans silenced the ‘retail investors’ who sought to boost an unloved video store chain For those of us who are as intimate with the inner workings of the stock market as we are with the circuitry of the Large Hadron Collider, the brouhaha over GameStop has been illuminating.
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...
