Latest opinions that Keith Bear has shared on Finextra

Join the Community

23,470

Expert opinions

41,845

Total members

341

New members (last 30 days)

188

New opinions (last 30 days)

29,130

Total comments

Join Sign in

Keith Bear

Vice President, Financial Markets

IBM

Member since

13 Aug 2002

Location

London

View Keith Bear's full profile

Keith's opinions

Trade Wars- Blockchain style

Coindesk’s recent article "Banks taking sides" covers the current race to market for competing trade finance initiatives and makes many valid observations on the current situation but also points to some key questions. Just to summarise, there are more blockchain initiatives underway in Trade Finance than pretty much any other area of f...

26 July 2018 Blockchain Observations

The 7 bank commitment to blockchain has many implications not just for trade finance but for the evo

Last week’s announcement by the seven bank Digital Trade Chain Consortium is another strong indication that the “peak hype” discussions around blockchain are somewhat misplaced. This blockchain network, designed to deliver a trade finance solution across Europe to support small and medium businesses, stands out from the steady flow of other blockc...

05 July 2017 Capital Markets Technology

How will regulation impact the development of blockchain technology ?

Jessi Baker, the Founder and CEO of Provenance, recently said: “At its heart, a blockchain is a system that allows people who don’t trust each other, to trust each other.” There is no doubt that blockchain is all about bringing trust to transactions. For almost any supply chain – be it food, medical records, precious gems and minerals, real esta

06 May 2017 Fintech innovation and startups

DTCC Selection of IBM, Axoni and R3 Points to Blockchain Maturity

This week's announcement that DTCC has selected IBM, in partnership with Axoni, to build a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) version of their Trade Information Warehouse (TIW) is a flagship event in the increasing role of blockchain technology in financial markets. It sets an industry standard for successful "at scale" industry deploym...

09 January 2017

We Need Consensus on the Best Approach to Consensus

As has been noted elsewhere, the Hyperledger project is experiencing spectacular adoption and growth as the combined benefits of a permission blockchain fabric grounded in open source and open governance is even more widely recognized. Indeed membership has risen from 30 to more than 80 participating firms now including DTCC, JPMC and CLS. One of...

27 September 2016

Groucho Marx and MiFID II

Whilst Groucho and MiFID may not normally be associated in the same sentence, the proposed European Parliament amendment activity going on around MiFID II may make Groucho's observation that: 'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies" particularly apposite fo...

24 June 2012 /regulation /wholesale

Are the clouds clearing?

Cloud models in wholesale financial services continue to get a lot of press, but fewer public references regarding value delivered, than you might expect for what many perceive as such a big game changer. In a survey we conducted with SWIFT last year, only 3% of bank respondents stated that it would have a major impact on the securities world compa...

18 October 2010 /sibos /wholesale

Frankie does VaR

On perusing an email from Lepus some weeks ago I was struck by the title of one piece of their research "VaR, what is it good for!" Having been involved in working with several banks on market risk implementations a decade ago, I remember the mathematical simplicity and purity of VaR models had at the time, the impact that the original Ri...

01 December 2008 /regulation

Peek at Peak Oil

Apparently, according to oil-price.net, oil companies won't be building any new refineries as the ~20-year ammortisation means there won't be enough oil to refine in that timescale. No new refinery has been built in the US since 1976. Thats a pretty sobering reality check even for those who believe the peak isn't yet reached.. It sounds like refin...

30 September 2008