Brexit

It was interesting reading as the UK issued its Brexit plan last Thursday. A 98-page white paper outlines the details of what Britain is asking for in leaving the European Union. Most of it is unworkable, but then Brexit itself is likely unworkable. After all, no MPs can agree what they want out of Brexit;…

I picked up Bloomberg’s Business Week in the airport lounge at the weekend. It always has interesting reading, but this one stood out because of the front-page cover. Of course, it should have occurred to me that Brexit was a great way to make money, and the article outlines how hedge fund managers made millions…

Another great Brexit debate at the ISITC Europe annual bash the other day. I was on a panel with Kay Swinburne, MEP Member of Economic and Monetary Affairs; Rebecca Healy, Lead Analyst of Financial Market Structure at Liquidnet; and Michael Cooper, CTO Radianz, BT Global Banking and Financial Markets at BT; and we had a…

As usual, the Financial Services Club was delighted to host David Doyle as our starting speaker for 2018, and he presented a fine overview of all the things bubbling as top  of the agenda in the European Union’s regulatory plans for 2018. Led by the Bulgarian presidency, the agenda focuses primarily on pushing forward the…

There’s a report coming out later today that sets out the Corporation of London’s Brexit plans, and the deal the City wants with Europe. There is also something that occurs to me which might protect the City’s interests more than anyone expects. It is the oldest continuous democratic commune in the world, dating back over…

Just over a year ago, it was predicted that the skies would fall, the earth would open and fire and brimstone would rain down all over Britain if we voted to leave Europe. Our people ignored all the dire warnings – what do experts know? – and a year later, not a great deal has…

I thought I’d wait until after the weekend to write a post about the implications of the UK election results.  It’s not my place to write about the pros and cons of the election campaigns, although I will say that the alienation of the elderly and those who are parents by the Conservative’s campaign –…

I was really interested in a presentation by Benny Boye Johansen, Head of OpenAPI at Saxo Bank, at our recent Nordic Finance Innovation meetings.  In particular, he put up some slides that were both illuminating, amusing and strange.  They were Google Trends charts looking at Payments API, PSD2 and Open Banking. Google trends tracks the…

There was an interesting article in The Independent last week about the big banks becoming bigger since the financial crisis hit.  The article notes that the big American banks control 70% of all US assets, and that this figure has increased 40% since 2008. In the lead up to 2008, parallel to increasing debt levels,…

I was reflecting on a friend of mine who runs a FinTech start-up.  Their company was on a funding round, and struggling.  They struggled so much that they ended up having to lay off a load of staff, cut budgets and defer income.  In fact, they reached the point where they would only survive another…