Opinion

Each year, I try to start the year with a few predictions of what will happen.  Last year proved to be pretty accurate, although it was playing fairly safe. This year is fuzzier in outlook, with not a great deal of obvious trends emerging. But a few that seem likely are: Certainty in the economy…

Back in January, I made five firm predictions for banking in 2009. Those predictions were: More major European and American banks disappear There will be some spectacular failures in the BRIC economies A Global Financial Regulatory Body is formed The US will drop IFRS Solvent banks gain major market share. So what happened? 1) More…

In the final part of this discussion of risks and opportunities in CEE, I was asked to give a view (see if you can spot me).   So here’s my brief summary: What are the risks for the next year or two? First, we are still in the middle of what I call the internet,…

Just back from Athens at a conference on retail banking with the star attraction being yours truly … well, I thought I was the star attraction until the post-lunch heavyweight speaker Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco, turned up … I remember hearing Tim Mason, Tesco's Marketing Director, back in 1997 talking about internet…

Most banks have evolved from days of branches and large offices, to banks with multiple channels of distribution and extensive technology backbones. The issue banks have with this structure is that the technology backbone is broken. This is well illustrated by a comment from one payments manager who said to me that he gets his…

Many of us thought it a bit weird that Gordon Brown suggested bringing back the Tobin Tax last weekend during the G20 summit.  The idea is to tax every financial transaction, just a little bit, one or two cents on each … this way you can build up a fund for any future financial shocks….