Britain celebrates euro failure
This week sees Britain celebrating. No, not the end of a phenomenal summer of sport. No, not the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee again. And no, not the 200 year anniversary of the start of the end of Napoleon after his fatal march to Moscow, although how we missed celebrating that one I don’t know. No, it’s none…
We are Legion: the History of Hacktivism
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,…
What is the alternative to LIBOR?
After the LIBOR debacle and the money laundering affairs of Standard Chartered and HSBC, the UK’s banks reputation are in the toilet. Now we have to rebuild, and this is where it gets interesting and challenging. After claiming that the Americans were holding our banks to ransom last week, we now see the potentially true…
Who are you f-ing Americans?
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…
Back to banking basics is nice, but not realistic
With all this talk of greed and corruption in the City (more on that later too), everyone is demanding a return to basic banking. I’ve heard this several times in the past week and over the past few years. Just yesterday, over lunch, my colleague was recalling the days when you needed credit from the…
Waiting for the PayPal of mobile payments
I had an interesting dialogue over lunch yesterday. One of my colleagues had just got his iZettle dongle. iZettle is a Square for Europe, offering Chip & Signature payments on smartphones (Square reads the mag stripe). It was originally going to be Chip & PIN, but the PIN terminal detail is too costly to rollout…
Why is Wall Street called Wall Street?
Did you ever wonder why Wall Street is called Wall Street? We all talk about Occupy Wall Street, an area of downtown New York that stretches across eight blocks from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the phrase has come to symbolise the financial markets of the United…
Why is Wall Street called Wall Street?
Did you ever wonder why Wall Street is called Wall Street? We all talk about Occupy Wall Street, an area of downtown New York that stretches across eight blocks from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the phrase has come to symbolise the financial markets of the United…
What is the future?
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