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…
We are pleased to provide our tenth 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 January 2011 December 2010 Source: Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter Market Share based upon Volume of Trading January 2011 December 2010 …
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…
I often use the analogy that traditional money is the bedrock foundation of our society, but this is changing. It began to change gradually as we introduced alternative currencies, such as loyalty programs and airmiles. These form pebbles of commerce that are significant, but are not traded nearly as intensely as real money. This does…
Finovate launched its first European show yesterday with over 400 attendees and 35 presentations from firms covering the whole gamete of financial services from investing to payments, personal financial management (a load of that!) to biometrics. Photo courtesy of Flickr: An Attentive Audience Eric Mattson and Jim Bruene of NetBanker asked me to host and kick…
Talking about best execution and stuff today, we got into a debate about whether banks were worried about trashing the trust of customers or were concerned about changing behaviours. My response is that banks aren’t that bothered about trashing trust of retail customers as retail customers don’t make them money. The mass deposits of itsy-bitsy…
Oliver Wyman launched a new report at Davos last week that has garnered a few headlines. Titled: “The Financial Crisis of 2015: An Avoidable History”, they suggest that although financial services executives and regulators have worked hard to design a more stable financial system, they might fail as there are other market stresses that could…
