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Nothing to do with the band, but much more to do with being constrained when it comes to innovation, a subject that is getting more and more focus amongst the Finanser community. In this instance, it's a survey on innovation in payments and banking, and repeats a survey from 2008. Back then, FSClub friend John…

Just to be clear, the word 'feck' in Ireland bears no relationship with the similar swear word used liberally by Gordon Ramsay. So why am I using this as a headline? Because the chap in the video below uses the latter word liberally to analyse the financial crisis from an Irishman's viewpoint (NSFW) … HT…

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…