David Bermingham was another recent guest at the Financial Services Club. David was one of the NatWest Three, the three bankers who worked for NatWest in the 1990s and got caught up in the Enron scandal. What happened and how come David ended up in an American jail when he's a British citizen? Well, after presenting…
I was wondering what to blog about today, as it’s grey and cold and wet and miserable and … then I realised, I should blog about Russia. Here in London, we’ve gradually seen a takeover of some of our key financial and national assets by billionaires from the former Soviet Union states. Some of these…
At the start of this week, we had a discussion at the Financial Services Club about the issues at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) over the summer when their payments systems failed. It was a major failure that garnered headlines worldwide, with many banks saying: “there, but for the grace of God, go I”. Why…
This week has been fascinating with lots of discussions about branch versus no branch and financial advisor versus product seller. I was going to leave it at that, but feel one final blog post worthy of discussion and this is about the role of social media. We all talk about Facebook and Twitter in the…
During my trip around the Middle East, I met a lot of banks looking at a lot of new ventures with lots of dialogue about new business models, new products and services, new organisational structures and new ways to communicate with staff, customers and stakeholders. One of the key questions was how to maximise human…
Whilst consumers are electing the next major political leader via crowdsourced populism, governments and companies begin developing cyberarms. This cyberwarfare is already rife, with a host of malware targeting middle eastern nations (see end of blog entry). What is obvious from these developments is that cyberattacks are the new form of warfare that evades direct…
I went to see a screening of a new film about Anonymous last night called We Are Legion: the Story of the Hacktivists. The film tells the story about the rise of Anonymous and the hacktivism movement, portrayed through interviews with many of the key players. The film includes some of my favourite discussion areas,…
I ‘ve been talking about contactless for years now - I remember talking about the Octopus card system about ten years ago after it launched in Hong Kong in 1997 – and still find it surprising how invisible it is. Sure it got some coverage at the Olympics but some, like Forrester, reckon that NFC mobile payments…
Standard Chartered paid off the new Sheriff of New York City, Benjamin Lawsky, to the tune of $340 million to get rid of the pest. As Investec's commentator Ian Gordon said yesterday, they “acted with pragmatism and integrity in the face of extreme provocation”. What really gets me here is the whole USA versus the rest…
More conversations about mobile payments with a wave of news this week: Google, Carriers, Credit Cards Unite on Mobile Payments Committee How Cheap NFC Changes the Mobile Payment Race What Square’s Starbucks Deal Means For Mobile Payments And An Apple iWallet My Mobile Payments floats operations in Britain Deutsche Telekom AG : Next step in…
