Cayman – the bank’s main loophole? Three times this week, I’ve come across dodgy dealings by banks in the Caymans to avoid taxation. The first is the Portuguese Bank BCP, or Banco Comercial Portugues SA to give it its proper name. In a detailed report in Bloomberg Markets Magazine, they recount the story of billionaire…
The UK Government recently ordered changes to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), as announced in the Banking Bill of 2009. The Bill resulted in a new regulation from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Policy Statement 09/11 (Download FSA PS09/11). PS09/11 rules that, from 31 December 2010, all financial firms must provide a Single Customer…
As many readers know, I've disliked Chip & PIN pretty much since it was launched, as there are better solutions out there. Here's my comment from 2006: Chris Skinner, CEO of financial services think tank Balatro told silicon.com: "I'm an anti-chip and PIN person. Sorry Apacs – I like them very much but it's not…
In the last of three reports on the Long Now of Finance (Part One and Part Two), the last part of the day focused upon new ways of banking and supporting 10,000 year thinking, with Bernard Lietaer opening the session with a dialogue around using demurrage to encourage this. Demurrage is a hard thing to…
Following on from yesterday’s blog about 10,000 year thinking, how does this relate to or work in finance? The idea is to fund long-term projects. The sort of massive projects that no-one knows how to fund. The sort of project that governments shy away from as politicians only have four-year lives and thinking past the…
So I finally got to attend a free lunch! This was the launch of the largest event focused upon using long-term thinking in finance that I’ve ever seen, and sponsored by many organisations including the Financial Services Club. Around 400 folks gathered to hear the wise words of legendary thinkers and speakers, including my good…
Mint’s blog, a must-read for all bankers if you want to know what consumers top of mind priorities are, sent a post out yesterday titled: “David & Goliath: How Customers are Sticking it to the Big Banks”. It immediately caught my attention because the Huffington Post in the USA has been promoting the idea of…
I’m continually impressed and amazed by the speed of change in the technology of the investment markets. For example, last year was all talk about low latency and lit versus dark pools. This year, it’s all about private cloud-based services based upon colocation and proximity services. Next year, it will be all about real-time liquidity…
