Latest opinions that Paul Penrose has shared on Finextra

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Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

Member since

06 Oct 2006

Location

London

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Paul's opinions

Ken Lewis and John Thain: Dumb and dumber

No matter which way you look at it Ken Lewis's bail-out of Merrill Lynch looks increasingly wrong-headed. John Thain - the man who sold the pony to Lewis - has now fallen on his sword after Merrill posted more than $15 billion in surprise losses just three weeks ago. The shock revelation followed the disclosure of early bonus pay-outs to Merrill st...

23 January 2009 /retail /wholesale

Heartland Payment Systems' Obama moment

Heartland Payment Systems first began receiving fraudulent activity reports from the card schemes late last year indicating a possible breach in its defences. The company called the Secret Service and breach forensics teams to investigate and eventually traced the source of the leak to a piece of installed malware last week. So why wait until late...

21 January 2009 /security

Longer fingers point to bigger profits

Researchers at Cambridge University have found a link between the profitability of male traders at a London bank and the ratio of index to ring fingers on their right hand. The so-called 2D:4D ratio is a biological marker indicating pre-natal exposure to high levels of testosterone in the womb. In a study to be published today in Proceedings of the...

13 January 2009 /wholesale Whatever...

What's your Twitter password?

Quality PR from Sophos. I couldn't put it better myself: IT security and control firm Sophos is calling on Twitter to enforce the use of strong passwords by its members following the recent publication of details on how a hacker managed to gain access to Twitter's internal systems earlier this week. According to reports, the teenage hacker, who u...

08 January 2009 /security /retail Finance 2.0

Dirty money and the flu pandemic

It's the flu season again, so time to dust off some research first published back in May last year in which researchers discovered that the human flu virus can survive on banknotes for up to 17 days. Discussing the results ahead of publication, Yves Thomas, head of the National Influenza Research Centre at Geneva University Hospital, told Reuters...

07 January 2009 /retail /wholesale

The Wells Fargo - Wachovia merger blog

US bank Wells Fargo is taking its experience with social media into unchartered territory (for the banking industry) with the launch of a new blog designed to keep customers up-to-speed with progress on its merger with Wachovia. The Wells Fargo - Wachovia blog will feature regular contributions from five team members - including CEO John Stumpf - ...

05 January 2009 /retail Finance 2.0