I've talked many times about the Ancient Sumerians creating money for sex, but they also created money for debt. Back then – 5,000 years ago – barley was the main measure of value and was alloted to Smerians according to age, gender and position in society. For example, men received sixty litres of barley a…
I spent the day yesterday discussing BPO, Business Process Outsourcing, an area I haven’t touched on for a while. BPO is a logical extension of Business Process Re-engineering, Business Process Improvement and Business Transformation, and are major contracts of faith as the outsourcee is cutting out a major part of their business. Not a platform,…
Marketing Magazine has published its annual list of the 100 most powerful marketers in Britain. The list is filled with eminent names from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as Phil Thomas at Reckitt Benckiser – the firm that sells Colgate, Cillit Bang and Dettol – to Jill McDonald of McDonalds (is that just coincidence?)….
After the downgrade of Greece led to the Greek crisis and the Germans worried about bailing them out, the crisis continues with the downgrade of Spain at the end of last week by Fitch. In fact, it looks like many European countries are worried, with the PIGS now the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece…
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…
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…
