Regulation

I’m a little bit mature these days … some of you might even say old … but you realise you’re getting on when something looks like an antique and you realise that, when you first saw it, you thought it was the future. In my case, this would be the first mainframe I programmed. Way…

There’s a whole load of things we’re grappling with today, and not many people seem to know how to grapple with them well. There’s a challenge for example regarding definitions. Defining what is “systemically important” versus what is not. Defining what is “commercial trade” versus speculative. Defining appropriate levels of capital versus required levels of…

At the Euro Finance conference in Frankfurt this week was a stream all about transaction banking which yours truly attended. The great and the good of our transaction world were also in attendance, as demonstrated by this short list of speakers: Albert Lechner, Vorstand Zahlungsverkehr, Betriebs-Center für Banken AG, München Andreas Kaiser, Leiter Cashmanagement, Bayer…

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…

So this morning RBS announce losses of £1.4 billion this morning, with various headlines reporting the news: RBS losses shrink on sharp fall in bad loans - The Telegraph RBS Narrows Third-Quarter Loss as Provisions Decline - Business Week The Royal Bank of Scotland sinks £1.4bn into the red – BBC Admittedly RBS has taken a battering, but their…

In the last of my blog entries on capital markets regulations and restructuring, I thought it worth mopping up best execution and global trading platforms, as these were referenced in the first item as a key part of future market change. Oh, and if you missed them, here are the previous blog entries: Part One:…