Humour

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

I received an email with this great story which you may have seen but, just in case, is worth sharing here. How do taxes work? Suppose that once a week, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our…

Ok, it’s my final work day before jetting off for the annual jamboree that is SIBOS. This year’s SIBOS has three themes: regulation, recovery and rebuilding trust. So, let’s explore these briefly. And, just in case you are not going to SIBOS, you might learn something too as these are my top tips for all…