Regulation

I hate acronymns, but these are three good ones: TSC is the Treasury Select Committee; ICB is the Independent Commission on Banking; and UXB is an UneXploded Bomb.   UXB is something that the TSC just laid for the ICB. By way of explanation, the TSC published a 100-page report titled “Competition …

OK, so I said that banks would absolutely not be disintermediated last week, and it sparked some interesting debate and dialogue. A few folks were incredulous that I could say this; others thought it made eminent sense; some noted that the movement of money could be disintermediated, but the holding …

I was involved in a tweminar yesterday organised by Karen Hsu of Informatica, and in conversation with Nancy Atkinson of Aite Group.  This conversation was all about payments and specifically SEPA, ISO20022, interoperability and more. It is also the second tweminar I've participated in – the first was with First Direct's …

A good discussion yesterday about government’s powers to influence banks and control their behaviours. The conversation went something along the lines of the following. Governments are working hard to create unified systems across borders for commerce. An example is SEPA and the PSD, MiFID and the Lisbon Agenda of the …

So we start the year as we mean to go on, with a bunch of MPs grilling a banker about bonuses, bailouts, lending and such like. Banker bashing 2011: same sheet, different day. This time it’s the turn of Bob Diamond, Chief Executive of Barclays Bank, to take the heat …

Investment banking has had a rocky year all year. Pilloried by politics, public and the media, the investment banker is currently about as popular as a Vampire at a Blood Bank … not a bad analogy as the refrain all year has been about that giant Vampire Squid that is …

So, there are a lot of things we’re juggling around with in the payments arena, from real-time to TARGET2 to SEPA to SWIFT ISO20022 to mobile to contactless to biometrics and more. I guess I can summarise this area best by using the results from this year’s payments survey because …

Our last meeting of the year at the Financial Services Club featured Andrew Tyrie, Head of the Treasury Select Committee.   The meeting was held in partnership with the Industry & Parliament Trust, and a good night was had by all. In a packed room, Andrew talked about the government’s …

On Tuesday last week the House of Commons Treasury Committee took evidence from Eric Daniels, Group Chief Executive, and Helen Weir CBE, Group Executive Director, Retail, Lloyds Banking Group Stephen Hester, Group Chief Executive, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Benny Higgins, Chief Executive, Tesco Bank It makes for interesting viewing, …

“Now then Brasher, what’s all this I hear about a clampdown on bonuses?” Sir Winston Albert Grant, Chairman of MegaBank Corp (MBC) and generally known by his colleagues as WAG, roared across the table at Roger Hughes, the new Chief Compliance Officer for MBC. Roger was called Brasher by WAG …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …