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Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

Member since

06 Oct 2006

Location

London

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Paul's opinions

Like MasterCard meets PayPal without the charges

That's the opinion of Ted Leonsis, chairman of RevolutionMoney, describing the new RevolutionCard, which was released in the US today. The PIN-protected card offers a line of credit, $15,000 top-up capacity, ID-theft protection and interest rates pegged to the card holder's credit rating. It also promises to significantly undercut the hated inter...

24 September 2007 /payments /retail Trends in Financial Services

Could IP disputes derail Sepa?

An interesting working paper from the Federal Reserve Board of Philadelphia which suggests that disputes over Intellectual Property rights pose a risk to the development of the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) and subsequent innovations in banking and retail payment media in Europe. The authors argue that the lack of a proper intellectual prop...

18 September 2007 /payments /retail Finextra@Sibos

P2P lenders see silver lining in credit crunch cloud

The credit crunch may be bad news for traditional banks, but the new breed of peer-to-peer lending operators are viewing the current liquidity crisis as a clear opportunity to take on more business. With traditional lenders tightening their loan criteria and dispensing with special introductory credit card rate offers and home equity loan options,...

14 September 2007 /retail Trends in Financial Services

A hedge fund manager speaks...

"The big lesson of the subprime crisis: that it's a mistake to lend money to poor people." "Rich people know how to invest extra money. Poor people just squander it on necessities. That's why capitalism works so well: it keeps money out of the hands of people who don't know how to use it and directs it to people who know how to make ...

12 September 2007 /regulation /wholesale Whatever...

Is Tibco the canary in the coalmine?

Tibco's decision to downgrade its earnings forceasts for the year after experiencing a sudden fall out in contracts at the end of the quarter has spurred some analysts to suggest that that the ongoing credit crunch may be hitting bank IT spending budgets. Katherine Egbert, an analyst with Jefferies and Co. notes: "Although Tibco is a relativel...

07 September 2007 /wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Financial Objects joins Sibos PR binge

Shares in core banking vendor Financial Objects slipped four per cent after the company reported a 21% decline in revenues from its banking division. The group has appointed a new head of banking in an effort to revive sales, but warns that it now expects to record a full year decline in revenues in the division. Financial Objects is resisting call...

06 September 2007 /payments /wholesale Finextra@Sibos

BeX failure bodes ill for Turquoise

The decision of the Boston Stock Exchange to shutter its new electronic equities trading venture BeX within nine months of its live launch in December last year is bad news for other up-and-coming competitors to established market venues. BeX was set up with the backing of five of Wall Street’s most powerful investment banks. It was designed to tak...

05 September 2007 /wholesale MiFID

Web 2.0 buzzword watch

Investors Business Daily via CNNMoney comments on the use of Web collaboration tools such as RSS, Wikis and blogs in the business sector under the guise of a new business buzzword: Enterprise 2.0. It's the first time I've heard the term in general use, but it seems that I'm well behind the curve. The phrase was first coined by Andrew McAfee from H...

04 September 2007 /retail /wholesale Trends in Financial Services

RIP STP, long live ICMA

STP (the industry trade mag) may be dead, but co-founder and MD Graeme Austin has conjured an unlikely resurrection as director of product management for the market services business of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA). Officially, STP Information Services went into voluntary liquidation a few months back after HM Revenue &...

04 September 2007 /wholesale Where are they now?

HSBC humbled by Facebook protest

Banking giant HSBC has been forced into an embarrassing u-turn over interest charges on graduate overdafts following a successful protest campaign on the Facebook social network organised by the National Union of Students. The rapidly proliferating campaign, called 'Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off!', (see Finblog earlier this week), attracte...

30 August 2007 /retail Trends in Financial Services