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I grew up with Mills & Boon, where old ladies wrote sexy stories about men on horses who would rip off the bodice of a young woman and deliver his sword. These days it seems to be Hello! that fills this vacuum, with Princess Kate flying on an economy flight and described as such: Who…

So for now this is the last of the guest blogs by Dr. Gail Bradbrook, the co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion. I do hope you have enjoyed something of the challenge, passion and alternative ways of seeing things that Gail has brought (find the others here). I invited Gail to contribute because I feel these difficult…

A colleague at The Financial Times picked out this quote from William Burroughs … … and it piqued my thoughts. Burroughs was a huge inspiration to David Bowie, who is a huge inspiration to me. I’ve read Naked Lunch, where this quote was taken, but they used this quote in relation to ESG. The Naked Lunch author…

I’ve written a lot recently about how technology can make the world a better place (read Digital for Good if you want to know more). It sounds esoteric but there are concrete examples from Alipay’s Ant Forest to Alandsbanken’s Baltic sea card, Green Finance is becoming a thing. So here are six FinTech firms who…

It’s thirteen years since I had the idea of using social media for insider trading. TBH, any media can be used to buck the system. These days we talk about Telegram and Signal, but a few years ago it was Blackberry Messenger and Facebook. Whenever technology develops anonymity, crime will follow. We might look for…

This week’s main blog discussions include … My data is my data Data ownership is a big battleground. Wanna know why? Check this out:* A man calls Pizza hut to order a pizza… CALLER:  Is this Pizza Hut? GOOGLE:    No sir, it’s Google Pizza. CALLER:  I must have dialed a wrong number, sorry. GOOGLE:  No sir,…

Data ownership is a big battleground. Wanna know why? Check this out:* A man calls Pizza hut to order a pizza… CALLER:  Is this Pizza Hut? GOOGLE:    No sir, it’s Google Pizza. CALLER:  I must have dialed a wrong number, sorry. GOOGLE:  No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month. CALLER:  OK. I would like to…

I’ve said for years that MasterCard has the wrong name. Cards are so last century. This century is all about the chip, so MasterCard should be renamed MasterChip. For the first time the other day, I found a banker who agrees with me. Reuters reports that Brazil’s central bank chief Roberto Campos Neto said he believes…

Inspired by an article by Ilias Louis Hatzis, and my recent musings around a cashless world, I wondered what privacy is these days? What is private? Are we bothered about privacy? I guess many have let their guard down about privacy this century as, when everything is online, we no longer have any. We allow…

I was recently presenting in Brazil, and did a fair bit of research and networking about the FinTech scene there. The biggest story is Nubank, parent company Nu, the challenger bank that’s become one of the biggest and brightest in the world. Valued at close to $50 billion when they IPO’d in December 2021, the…