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Sep 7, 2010

When will we know there won’t be another meltdown?

As mentioned the other day, I will be at this year’s SWIFT Show SIBOS focused upon a dialogue around the Long Now. The aim is to find some big super-crunchy questions about the long view of banking and finance, and try to answer them. What sort of questions are we thinking about? Here are a…

Sep 7, 2010

Summertime blues: give your firm agility

OK, you’re all back from work and feeling the post-summertime holiday blues … what can I say? Not a lot. So, as it’s Tuesday and you’re probably pulling your hair out already. Breathe. Calm down. Now think about your company. Most of you probably work for a large business. An elephant of a company. So…

Sep 7, 2010

Tomorrow, at six minutes past five

Set your alarms. Get up early. Celebrate a once in a century moment. Yes, tomorrow at six minutes past five or, to be more exact, at seven seconds past six minutes past five it will be: 05:06:07 on 8th September. Or, in other words: 05:06:07 08/09/10 [Sorry Americans, your day happened a month ago on…

Sep 6, 2010

Visa: processing global payments in under a second

I’ve used a video from Visa Europe to illustrate what real-time payments processing means in practice for a while now, and finally tracked it down on Brightcove: It’s a good video, tracking the journey of a payment from a Swedish bank customer using a mobile contactless phone in China. The payment travels through 32,000 of…

Sep 3, 2010

Bunfight at the Wall Street Corral

America has a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), thanks to the Dodd-Frank reforms. The CFPB is a bit like the FBI, but focused upon money. Who could possibly run the CFPB? They would need to be an Eliot Ness Untouchable sort of person. A big swinging heavyweight, who can shoot the baddies of the…

Sep 2, 2010

Making the anti-social banker social

I was intrigued to see Chris Anderson’s discussion of the Web is Dead in last month’s Wired Magazine, for no other reason than how it resonates with my own thoughts on this area back in May. In May, I received a very lukewarm reaction in Asia to the idea that everything in the future will…

Sep 2, 2010

Monthly MiFID MTF Monitor: August 2010

We are pleased to provide our eighth 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 August 2010 July 2010 Source: Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter Market Share based upon Volume of Trading August 2010 July 2010…

Sep 1, 2010

This is mean … so mean … not scrumpy at all

Strongbow Cider has just launched a new ad in the UK. The original advert honours the workers who create value – such as the pork pie fillers of Melton Mowbray and the sofa deliverymen of the M4 corridor: The new one is slightly less complementary and is targeted at … bankers [click here for larger…

Aug 31, 2010

Banks best customers? Themselves!

Over the weekend, Umair Haque tweeted the following: "I'm going to make you rich. You just have to be my bitch". A must read (esp for non wall streeters). with a link to this article from ProPublica: Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis The article is pretty shocking. Here's the opening paragraphs: "Over the last two…

Aug 31, 2010

SIBOS 2010: How do you see the world in 2025?

At SWIFT's SIBOS this year, I'm going to be one of the key business owners of the Innotribe stream focused upon the “Long Now”, a theme I've blogged about several times before. The Long Now is all about thinking for the long term, rather than the short term. It is about projects that foster long-term…