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Banks are showing major profits again, bad debts are reducing fast, emerging markets are growing fast and bonuses are good, so all things are back to normal on the Good Ship Lollipop. Or are they? Not quite. Certainly profits are looking positive as Societe Generale, UBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs etc…

There’s this new phenomena emerging of high interest loans. For some people they are shocked by such developments. For me, it’s a natural thing. What am I talking about? Wonga, Quick Quid, Pay Day Bank, Wage Day Advance and more are all out there now, many of them advertising heavily on the box such as…

Last night we had a meeting of the Financial Services Club in Dublin. It was a good meeting, with a focus on cybercrime, but unusually for the Club one of the speakers collapsed half-way through the evening and an ambulance had to be called. He finished his speech, surprisingly, but had to do so seated….

The news that the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the Canadian Stock Exchange TMX was rapidly followed by an announcement that NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse are also to merge. Equally, we’ve seen the Singapore Exchange SGX trying to acquire the Australian Exchange ASX, along with many other movements towards consolidation. I’m not going to…

At a leather-decked boardroom table in the backwaters of Whitehall a group of smart City gentlemen meet with some rather scruffy governmental characters to talk about a deal. For the purposes of this story, we’ll call the smarts Eric, Bob, Stephen and Stuart, and the scruffs George, Andrew and Mervyn. Bob, with heavy American overtones:…

Some people had an issue with the number of personal financial management (PFM) solutions that were presented at Finovate last week. To be honest, they had the same issue in New York and in other innovation events preceding. Why? Because the view is that PFM is a mature market that started with firms like Mint…

For the third year running, I was involved in the Card & Payments Awards. This year I was one of the judges and, last night, the sixth annual ceremony took place at the Grosvenor House in London hosted by comedian, Marcus Brigstocke. Bank of America gained the most awards by clocking up four trophies, two…