Regulation

Jun 24, 2009

How accountable are the rating agencies for this mess?

We all talk about how the rating agencies were, in part, responsible for creating the mess of credit and credit instruments that caused this crisis. After all, they are meant to be rating credit aren't they? But I didn't realise exactly how bad a job these guys had done until I saw this quote: “In…

Jun 18, 2009

Grieving … and the US Banking Reforms

I was trying to think of the future of banking and a model for making this work. This in the context of yesterday's US regulatory reforms announcements (see next blog: “things worth reading”, for the full details of these reforms), and so I scrabbled about wondering what happens as we go forward. Then, bearing in…

Jun 18, 2009

Grieving … and the US Banking Reforms

Jun 12, 2009

A compliance culture or function?

Over a dinner this week, there was a fascinating discussion about the role of compliance. Compliance. A culture or a function? A view of complying and being subservient or of being proactively compliant. Compliance as a painful enforced change or an opportunity to re-engineer and improve. Compliance. Threat or opportunity? To be truthful, compliance can…

Jun 12, 2009

A compliance culture or function?

Jun 9, 2009

IBM discovers banks don’t understand their customers

I received a few interesting reports recently and just got a chance to read some of them. The first I got around to was from IBM's Institute for Business Value, with the grand title: “Toward transparency and sustainability: building a new financial order”. There are various statistics and insights in the report which put the…

Jun 9, 2009

IBM discovers banks don’t understand their customers

Jun 2, 2009

Banks must still deleverage … and deleverage lots!

There are some people you can listen to for hours, and some that send you to sleep when they open their mouth. Willem Buiter definitely falls into the first category – who said I fall into the latter? – which is why we invited him to address the Financial Services Club recently. It happened to…

Jun 2, 2009

Banks must still deleverage … and deleverage lots!

May 28, 2009

This house believes new liquid architectures will dominate

On 9th June, we are holding a Capital Markets Chamber meeting of the Financial Services Club that will debate the motion: "This house believes new liquid architectures will dominate bank's strategic plans from next year onwards". This debate focuses upon how banks benefit from doing liquidity risk management right, particularly in a post-Lehman world. Lehman…