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Jul 26, 2010

Stress tests useful or misleading?

Having spent much of the weekend absorbing the European bank stress test results, I’ve got to ask why they bothered. OK, so it was to get bank share prices up, but the whole thing was just a typical European sham where every country does things in a different way, with the whole thing designed to…

Jul 20, 2010

The first Metro Bank marketing brochure [UPDATE]

I've talked a lot about Metro Bank already, and will probably talk a lot more about them as they are the first brand new spanking retail bank to launch in Britain since Charles Dickens popped his clogs. Well, almost. Actually, it's quite strange in that, like buses, you don't see a new bank launch and…

Jul 16, 2010

Goldman Sachs and the Great Escape

I spent most of Friday thinking about the news of Goldman Sachs record $550 million fine from the SEC (here's the detail of what they were accused of). The last fine of any consequence the SEC levied like this, in my memory, is the $100 million fine of UBS back in 2004 for supplying dollars…

Jul 16, 2010

Tesco Bank’s CEO talks tech

Back when Metro Bank (opening 29th July) were looking for a core banking system, they initally had Temenos and Fiserv as their front runners. Temenos got the deal as Metro Bank wanted to do this in a cloud computing style of operation, where each customer transaction is charged to them on a pay-per-transaction basis with…

Jul 15, 2010

More Banking Statistics: Capital Markets

A final posting on bank stats, but this time focused upon capital markets. According to the report from TheCityUK (which I cited a couple of times last week): Companies raised £83 billion on the London Stock Exchange in 2009, including £5 billion raised on AIM, the market designed specifically for smaller, high growth companies. An…

Jul 13, 2010

World Cup in Numbers

I haven't said much about the World Cup on the Blog, as it's not really about banking, but well done to Spain and hard luck to the Netherlands or, as they are now nicknamed, the Studs. Anyways, I was intrigued to see this list of numbers and, just because I like numbers, thought they could…

Jul 13, 2010

The most influential people in finance

Financial News has just announced their 2010 list of the most influential people in finance. Interesting list, and here's a selection of the ones who interested me: Chief Executives Brady Dougan (Credit Suisse) Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank) Oswald Grübel (UBS) John Varley (Barclays) Michael Sherwood (Goldman Sachs) Baudouin Prot (BNP Paribas) Jonathan Moulds (Bank of…

Jul 2, 2010

Monthly MiFID MTF Monitor: June 2010

We are pleased to provide our sixth 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 June 2010 May 2010 Source: Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter Market Share based upon Volume of Trading June 2010 May 2010…

Jun 29, 2010

Y Viva Espana … nein

Over the past week, I’ve spent time conferencing in the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Santander. In the case of the latter, my family thought I was going to a conference in the bank’s vaults, and I had to get a map out to show them that there actually is a city called Santander. Now…

Jun 28, 2010

England’s rarest coin

I like auctions and collecting stuff so when it was announced that England’s rarest coin was going to be sold by Spinks Auction House last week, I had to have a look. The coin is a real rarity dating back to the 7th century and King Eadbald of Kent, who ruled from 616 to 640…