Blog Index

  Our biggest stories of the week are … When Irish eyes are crying In this month's Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis – he of Liar’s Poker and the Big Short fame – analyses the situation in Ireland after the crisis. The title of the lengthy article is: “When Irish eyes are crying” and the article…

  Our biggest stories of the week are … Innovations in Banking in Action  Finovate launched its first European show yesterday with over 400 attendees and 35 presentations from firms covering the whole gamete of financial services from investing to payments, personal financial management (a load of that!) to biometrics. All of them on the…

  Our biggest stories of the week are … Banking in 2020 I’ve been asked recently to think about banking in 2020. That’s ten years away and, if we cast our memories back ten years, it’s quite a leap. Ten years ago, we had lots of themes bubbling away including customer-centricity, technological… If the banks…

Our biggest stories of the week are … Yes, Prime Minister: the Northern Rock Episode This week saw the first discussions of a possible sale of Northern Rock back into the private sector. The question is: who would buy Northern Rock? To find out, I listened in to this episode of “Yes, Prime Minister”, as…

Our biggest stories of the week are … Information as a competitive weapon A year ago, I was hugely influenced by a 16-page technology supplement in the Economist that talked about information wars.  The stand-out quote from that report was from Craig Mundie, Head of Research and Strategy at Microsoft, who stated: “Data is the…

  Our biggest stories of the week are … A few predictions for 2111 … Welcome to 2011 and I hope you all had a lovely, jubbly holiday. And so back to work and we'll spend most of this week forecasting the next year, but first look forward 100 years to 2111, as I promised…

  Our biggest stories of the week are … Is there any competition in banking? So along I go to the Independent Commission on Banking’s (ICB) Hearing this week on bank competition and financial inclusion. For those unfamiliar with the ICB, they are the idea of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, who asked the…