Numbers

There’s a great interactive review of investment banking markets on the Financial Times today. The chart compares the fortunes of ten investment banks: Bank of America; Barclays; Citi; Credit Suisse; Deutsche; Goldman Sachs; JPMorgan; Morgan Stanley; Royal Bank of Scotland; and UBS. You can check out how their revenues, employee …

Whilst consumers are electing the next major political leader via crowdsourced populism, governments and companies begin developing cyberarms. This cyberwarfare is already rife, with a host of malware targeting middle eastern nations (see end of blog entry). What is obvious from these developments is that cyberattacks are the new form …

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.

I ‘ve been talking about contactless for years now  - I remember talking about the Octopus card system about ten years ago after it launched in Hong Kong in 1997 – and still find it surprising how invisible it is. Sure it got some coverage at the Olympics but some, like Forrester, …

This week’s TIME Magazine has a spread all about how mobile technologies are changing our world. There are stories of how it’s changing elections, charity, privacy and more, as well as getting rid of our wallets of course. The wallet piece is pretty weak to be honest, with the story of one …

More conversations about mobile payments with a wave of news this week: Google, Carriers, Credit Cards Unite on Mobile Payments Committee How Cheap NFC Changes the Mobile Payment Race What Square’s Starbucks Deal Means For Mobile Payments And An Apple iWallet My Mobile Payments floats operations in Britain Deutsche Telekom …

Someone made the comment that I would not receive any business from the five banks named yesterday with the biggest mistakes, so I thought I would rectify that by picking on five good things that banks are doing. It’s harder to find, because it is less reported, but there are …

I just received a Gallup report for the World Bank about gender differences in bank account usage. The headline is that gender barriers exist worldwide to banking. Hmmm … women are less included in finance than men. Hmmm … my initial reaction was so what? No, I’m no misogynist, but …

It’s Friday, it’s summertime and it’s the day the London 2012 Olympics begin. Fantastic. Tonight’s opening ceremony should be amazing and so, rather than talking about banking today, I thought I would talk about banking Olympians. Lloyds Bank were one of the first to sponsor the London Olympics. They have …

As recently mentioned, I attended the Re|source 2012 conference at Oxford University last week. The meeting took place in the historic School of Examinations building … … and was a meeting of the great and the good to discuss how to build a sustainable world. The conference had many of …

A couple of years ago, I was talking a lot about Metro Bank. The reason being that it is Britain’s first brand spanking new retail bank in living memory. The bank has since received lots of free publicity as the media love an upstart, but I have not blogged much …

I’ve spent a long time working for maniacs, idiots and psychopaths, and now I know why: that’s what it takes to get to the top in banking technology circles. It’s been scientifically proven too – to get to the top of a company, you need to stay there a long …

I was travelling on British Airways the other day, and really enjoyed their article in Business Life Magazine about how much the Queen costs the economy, As a result, I thought it worth posting today as we’re about to head off on a four-day vacation in Britain to celebrate her …

There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility. If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass fast. That’s true of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. …

We've just completed our annual survey on SEPA and the PSD, which will be released via a free webinar next week [to register, please visit:http://digbig.com/5bgayr]. The headlines of the survey were released today for EBADay, and so here's the full press release: SEPA will survive even if the Euro doesn't …