Brexit

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…

We had a fun session of the Financial Services Club this week, in light of the lack of clarity on Brexit from the UK Gov.  The discussion was our regular New Year kick-off meeting with special guest David Doyle, sage of all EU regulations affecting Financial Services.  David provided us with great insight into the…

So Theresa May made clear on Tuesday what the Brexit plan is … or did she?  Some say that her plan is Vague (in reference to her appearance on the cover of Vogue) whilst others gave it a big thumbs up. Mind you, he did write most of it.  The clear points that came out…

So we finished the Financial Services Club season with a discussion of the implications of Brexit on the City of London and Fintech London, with a panel debate amongst four stellar people: Sharon Bowles, former MEP and now Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted; Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO, Innovate Finance; Jeremy Light, Managing Director, Accenture Payment Services; and…