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I went to see my bank manager this week to discuss a small irritation in the business accounts – that’s a bank account, not a part of the anatomy. The irritation was that I needed to transfer a large amount of money fast – £20,000 – and it could not be transacted online due to…

I dropped into the offices of one of the credit rating agencies this week. The one that caused confidence in Greece to fall through the floor: Standard & Poors. The agencies are interesting places at the moment as many attributed the AAA-rated toxic mortgage derivatives to their watch, so now they’re being cleaner than clean…

It’s interesting to see the rise in high interest, short term loan sites.  I blogged about Wonga last year, and now there’s Quick Quid. Here’s their advert: Wow! 2356% APR! That’s TWO THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX PERCENT annual interest!!!! 2356%!!!!!!!! OK, it sounds bad … but it’s not. Y’see these sites are designed for…

After Angela Merkel's comments about the "euro is in danger", I was going to write a long and in-depth review of the state of the euro … but I was beaten to it by Chris Blackhurst's column in the evening standard. Rather than reinvent the wheel, just read what he has to say: "Merkel was…

I received an interesting white paper the other day from Wim Raymaekers, Head of Banking Market at SWIFT on Liquidity Risk. Here’s the Executive Summary: Many books and papers have been and will be written about the liquidity crisis that started mid 2007, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and its effect on…

I was having a conversation with a firm considering entering banking in the UK. They would be an unexpected player, as their brand is seen to be trusted but totally unrelated to financial services. So I sent them this article from my collection of white papers, and thought it may be of interest to the…

After writing earlier this week about the bullish views of HSBC on China and Asia as a whole, with the clear view that the world has decoupled, Asia is self-sustaining and China will be the largest economy in the world by 2035 or sooner, I was really interested to hear the views of Damian Glendinning…

This has nothing to do with banking, but all to do with marketing.  John Lewis, a mutual partnership retail store in Britain, recently launched a new advert.  Costing £6 million, it's a remarkable ad and captures and inspires citizens across Britain, particularly women: "All over Britain, women are kneeling in front of their tellies, heads…