Standard & Poor's have been talking to me for a while now, and sent a note yesterday that is quite intriguing. It's justifying their analysis of course, but when you think everyone goes on about credit rating agencies being at fault, we should sometimes pause to consider. Here's what the note says: Between 1981 and…
You may have seen the T-Mobile UK ads, where a flashmob arrive at Liverpool Street Station or Trafalgar Square, London, and start a song or greet passengers at Heathrow airport … brilliant. It's feelgood stuff, brings a smile to your face and is just, well, 21st century cool. So it's nice to see a bank…
Ernst & Young has just completed a massive survey of over 20,000 consumers worldwide to see what they think about their banks. Half of the consumers are from Europe, but the rest cover the globe with a strong showing in Latin America. The results are summarised in a 56-page report which you can download from…
Another day, another payments conference and this one is International Payments Summit 2011. Just had an interesting panel discussion with: Dr Michael Salmony of Equens; Dr Malte Krueger of the University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt; Bridget Taxy of De La Rue; and Ron Delnevo of Bank Machine; about the feasibility of a cashless society. We’ve…
We’ve had lots of discussions about the branch being dead. I’ve had many here, whilst lots of other websites and blogs have done the same. For example, my mate Brett King recently wrote a blog entry: “If your bank is opening branches – get worried” with some great stats: Bank visits have declined in the US by…
We are pleased to provide our eleventh month of monitoring the MTF performances in European Equities trading, in partnership with Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter (EMSR). Market Share based upon Euro Value February 2011 January 2011 Source: Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter Market Share based upon Volume of Trading February 2011 January 2011 Source:…
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami over the weekend was terrible. In a country that is familiar with Earthquakes – remember Kobe – it is surprising the devastation caused, and the Tsunami that followed made it far worse. In fact, a story that came out just today was of the poor guy Hiromitsu Shinkawa, who was found…
I got a note yesterday from a friend in Turkey who brought to my attention that the Board of Competition fined seven of their banks for working together in a cartel-style operation that was anti-competitive. They called it “a secret gentlemen’s agreement”. Apparently, the agreement in this case was based upon competitive bidding for corporate…
I’ve got a new theme building about money being worthless, useless, rubbish, a waste of space … you name it. Not real money of course, but money as a concept. It no longer works in the modern world. Money is meaningless. It was created for the physical exchange of trade, goods and services. Today we…
