Just spent a few days in Moscow. It’s my third visit here, and each time I find the country intriguing, enlightening, engaging and frustrating. By way of example, the society is still very rules-based but everyone ignores the rules because no-one enforces them properly. The traffic is jammed all day on the freeways, and cars…
I was recently asked to make a comment on the UK Building Societies sector. Like American credit unions, most building societies exist in the interests of their members as mutual organisations. They balance customer interests with their portfolio of business, and try to manage all on an even keel. Unlike most other financial institutions, the…
There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility. If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass fast. That’s true of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The more intuitive, accessible, easy…
The shock news this week is that JPMorgan, that mighty institution of financial stability that has steered through this crisis with ease and made Jamie Dimon, its CEO, the sage of finance … has been rocked by a trading scandal on the scale of a Nick Leeson, Jerome Kerviel and Kweku Adoboli. This time the…
Flying around all the time, you sometimes forget to absorb the ads around you. There’s one particular ad I’ve spotted for some time now, but only today got around to investigating. It’s HSBC’s latest campaign. Moving on from the world’s local bank, they’re now heavily into the future. That’s my space (not myspace). In fact,…
Flying around all the time, you sometimes forget to absorb the ads around you. There’s one particular ad I’ve spotted for some time now, but only today got around to investigating. It’s HSBC’s latest campaign. Moving on from the world’s local bank, they’re now heavily into the future. That’s my space (not myspace). In fact,…
I’ve spent my life working with banks and technology firms, trying to align technology with business strategy and vice versa. And yet it was only yesterday that I realised that these two industries are ripping each other apart. The fact is that banking was managed in a risk averse way for centuries through diligent book-keeping…
I’ve spent my life working with banks and technology firms, trying to align technology with business strategy and vice versa. And yet it was only yesterday that I realised that these two industries are ripping each other apart. The fact is that banking was managed in a risk averse way for centuries through diligent book-keeping…
Occupy Wall Street is seven months old. It started on September 17th 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, and rapidly became a global movement representing the 99 percent who are squeezed out of opportunity by the 1 percent who control all the assets and wealth of the world. The trouble is, being seven months old…
