Opinion

Jun 1, 2009

This crisis is nothing new

We talk about how the financial market gloom is so bad, and our politicians have now all caught the swine flu too … but it's nothing new. Life has always overwhelmed us with its speed of change and the turbulence such change causes. Take this summary from one of my favourite books: “The pace was…

May 28, 2009

Branches Wanted: Dead or Alive?

There are wide differences of opinion between different banks of the role of a branch these days. Is a branch a branch, a store, a transactional centre, a sales centre, a retail lobby, an automated machine or all of these things or none of them? On the one hand, I see HSBC saying that branches…

May 26, 2009

A real-time global pulse

As we use low latency systems, faster payments, twitter and other technologies, we silently watch the revolution of our world from local to global communities, and to a real-time global pulse. The thing is, do you ever stop to notice? The fact that you can trade in a millionth of a millionth of a second,…

May 14, 2009

The danger that SEPA may not happen

I was invited to a conference this week and given the title of the talk as: “Why there’s a very real danger that SEPA may not happen”. As a good European who believes in the PSD and SEPA, I declined to discuss this and invited my long-time acquaintance Sir Jonathan Brit to speak on my…

May 14, 2009

The danger that SEPA may not happen

May 7, 2009

The Future of the City of London

I've seen a couple of bits of commentary in the past week about the City of London losing its strength, namely: City's dominance in doubt (Telegraph) London Ponders Its Future as Financial Powerhouse (New York Times) During the boom years of the 2000s, London competed with Frankfurt and New York to become the financial centre…

May 7, 2009

The Future of the City of London

May 6, 2009

The Susan Boyle Bank

I’ve talked before about the new economics of banking and how the businesses we ran ten years ago should now cost 80% less to run. For example, 80% of the costs of the Financial Services Club would have been in mailing, telephone and printing ten years ago, sending out newsletters and invitations, calling people to…

May 4, 2009

Stock picking with real-time news

I now know why Google's staff are so rich and wealthy. It's not down to their shares, which rocketed since the 2004 IPO: because, like everyone else's, it's also tanked. Google's stock peaked at the end of 2007 at over $700 per share and is now down at just under $400. Result: there must be…

May 1, 2009

Arguing about Twitter is a waste of time

There have been various arguments about Twitter in the last few months and whether the alerts tool is useful or not. I started one debate a while ago and now there is another one (maybe). First, let me set the record straight before folks think I'm a puritanically obsessed Twitterati. At a personal level, I…