History

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I’ve been debating some future presentations with various folks today, and a little ray of light went off in my head. The light was triggered by a comment: “can you talk about what impact regulatory change may have on bank to corporate relationships using examples historically?” The question was really asking about the unintended impact…

I’ve been debating some future presentations with various folks today, and a little ray of light went off in my head. The light was triggered by a comment: “can you talk about what impact regulatory change may have on bank to corporate relationships using examples historically?” The question was really asking about the unintended impact…

This is the final part of a series about how the City of London developed its financial prowess and system.  Previous entries include: Part One: The Romans Part Two: The Vikings Part Three: Medieval Times Part Four: The Tudors Part Five: The Stuarts Part Six: The Bank of England Part Seven: Lloyd's of London Part…