I just got around to catching a few paragraphs from David Broder's fascinating column in the Washington Post a few days ago, about Congress in the USA: "The record of the Washington politicians is summarized in the report that came out of the Congressional Budget Office last week. That nonpartisan scorekeeper announced that it projects…
Lots and lots of coverage of the Lehmans shambles this week: Lehman bosses severely criticised – BBC Lehman bosses ‘used lazy gimmick’ – The Times Lehman 'hid billions' – report – The Independent JPMorgan, Citigroup helped trigger Lehman collapse, report argues – The Telegraph Lehman report casts auditors in poor light – Financial Times London…
In January, I wrote a blog post about competitive strategies, and the Sharks versus the Jets of the Banking industry. This blog entry developed into a short white paper that has just been published by Hewlett-Packard. Here's the intro: The Nature of the Beast: Banking Strategies and Technologies for the 2010s It’s obvious that the…
Larry Fish, former CEO and Chairman of Citizens, talks about the crisis in a dialogue with Simon Johnson, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management. It's got a really long (six minute!) introduction before Larry starts talking, then it gets interesting. Good questions raised including: why did Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia's banks…
Meeting with a mate last night, who happens to be on the inside track of EU regulatory matters as they relate to Capital Markets, he turned to me and said: "have you seen CESR's latest?" Of course I hadn't, as I've been payments oriented all week and CESR is the European Regulatory body that created…
More voting at IPS2010, with some interesting views expressed. The session opened with three short questions which were quite telling. Question 1Does the banking industry need to change as a result of the financial crisis?93.2% Yes6.8% No Most of the audience are from banks, so that’s quite telling … and who exactly were the 1…
According to yesterday's Evening Standard, Rory Bremner compered the Private Asset Managers' Awards at the Dorchester over the weekend and cracked a number of edgy jokes. Asked Bremner: “Anyone here Dutch? Great salesmen, the Dutch. Anyone that can sell ABN Amro…” He still got a laugh for that, unlike the crack that he “once had…
I’m here at one of the largest jamborees of the payments year behind SIBOS, IPS2010. The conference opened with a lengthy interactive voting session with the 400-strong audience. Here are the results: Question 1 What will have the biggest impact on transaction banking in 2010? 46.5% New regulations16.0% New payments providers12.3% Interest rates12.3% Growth in…
