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Banks form alliance to stop G20

I had an interesting (but competely April Fooled fictional) conversation with the Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest banks last night. He was telling me about a new bank alliance that has been formed to address their concerns over what the G20 might do about bank bonuses, taxation, lending, governance and general operations….

The Royal House of Treasury

I’ve received some really bad Nigerian 419 scams over the last few years and a few that made me laugh. Not many have me ROTFL – that’s rolling on the floor laughing for you in the corner with the baboon face and hairy nose. But this one landed in my inbox this morning and it…

Yes, Prime Minister: the Northern Rock Episode

This week saw the first discussions of a possible sale of Northern Rock back into the private sector. This is the bank that signalled the real start of the credit crisis when it went under during the summer of 2007 and had to be nationalised. Interestingly, the press have all started speculating who is going…

Merry Christmas

Well the holiday season is finally here and the blog is shutting down until 4th January. In the spirit of the season, I thought it would be nice to leave you with something Christmassey, so I got my friend MC Skinner to produce a little video.   Happy Holidays! Christmas Chris from Chris Skinner on…

Bank tells women what to wear and men to shave

It may be old news for some of you by now, but the wires have been abuzz with the news that UBS has issued a strict dress code guide to staff in Switzerland. The guide amounts to a weighty 44 pages, and begins with lines such as: “An impeccable appearance can procure interior peace and…

Barclays Capital is not just any old investment bank

I love the understatement in some magazines when they refer to companies. For example, they might say: “according to a report today from Microsoft, a software company”; or, “in the news today the BBC, a broadcasting company” … a bit like US reports saying: “news today from London, England” or “Paris, France”. OK, OK, I…

Bank Lending

Ben Bernanke’s lost iPhone

Apparently, Ben Bernanke lost his iPhone recently. The guy who found it took a screenshot of an exchange between Bernanke and Tim Geithner, with the Fed demanding the Government's overdrawn balance be cleared. The date of the exchange was Halloween 2010, a few days before Bernanke agreed to $600 billion of money to be issued…

Talking about banker’s bonuses

“Now then Brasher, what’s all this I hear about a clampdown on bonuses?” Sir Winston Albert Grant, Chairman of MegaBank Corp (MBC) and generally known by his colleagues as WAG, roared across the table at Roger Hughes, the new Chief Compliance Officer for MBC. Roger was called Brasher by WAG because every time he came…

Argh – Eric Cantona calls for a revolution!!!

Eric Cantona, the charismatic and gifted French footballer, has ignited the fire to bring down the banking system on 7th December 2010. Here's what he said: "We don't pick up weapons to kill people, to start the revolution… the revolution is really easy to do nowadays. What is the system? The system revolves around the…

The Regulator

I was thinking a lot about the recent news that the FSA has ordered all mobile telephone calls to be monitored for any trader or investment banker using a corporate mobile telephone. Great. It doesn’t seem like such a great idea though, as traders and bankers will just switch to personal mobiles or those of…

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