Samarth Shekhar Regional Manager EMEA at SixThirty Ventures
With the continent's share of FinTech funding and deals under 6% of the global volumes (and less than 2% in the German-speaking countries), this is not a post about a burgeoning fintech scene in the region. However, talking to or meeting over a hundred startups, investors and banks for the first study of fintech startups in Germany, Austria and Swi...
03 April 2014
It has never been a better time to start (or own!) a FinTech Startup- or so it seems. VC funds, bank and tech provider venture funds pumped in over a billion dollars in FinTech-focused funds in 2013 alone. The announcements and the size of the funds underscore the attention FinTech is getting from investors and the confidence of expected returns. T...
12 October 2013
Investors put in over €35 mn (disclosed amounts only) into these FinTech startups in the last three years. However, this is really just a starting point: as per an Oct. 2012 study by London New Finance, of the total investments and M&A spend into nearly 350 FinTech transactions globally, Germany's share was less than 0.6%, compared to the UK (...
04 September 2013
Further to my previous post calling for more SWIFT-style sharing of IT and back office among European Banks we now have (1) Deutsche Bank calling upon rivals to share investment banking technology; (2) ING promoting an API developer portal for building open source Retail Banking software; and (3) the ECB moving closer to a European banking union...
14 September 2012 /retail /wholesale
The shifting landscape of providers offering banking services is likely to force the (till date) in-bred banking sector to make acquisitions outside, bringing in leaders with techno-business backgrounds at the helm of bread-and-butter businesses divisions rather than just at the fringes (e.g. "Head of Mobile Banking") as has been the cas...
27 August 2012 /retail
After five years of rehab, Citigroup has certainly figured out which side its bread is buttered and decided to go back to the old darling of banking, perhaps leaving the dealmakers licking their wounds. Not only are the "too big" banks whether in the US or Europe making the right noises about a strong Retail Bank as the core of their bus...
21 August 2012 /retail
Europe, this patched up network of countries with different political and cultural backgrounds is of course hard to unite. But what’s taking so much time for European banks – creaking with costs, shuddering at upcoming compliance requirements – to realize that they need to do something FAST, and TOGETHER – to stay afloat? Within IT and operations (...
05 August 2012
Fact #1: Revenue per Employee in 2011 dropped to half of their 2006 levels in 2011 for some top European investment banks. Fact #2: The EU FS sector will spend between €33.3bn-€50Bn over the next three years simply to comply with new regulatory demands. Ongoing crises, falling revenues and looming compliance costs - could these be the common enem...
27 July 2012
Banking IT leaders need to think “Lean”. For nearly a decade, banking IT has been trying to transform from a back-office implementor to a business enabler. With banks almost always in crisis in the last five years, budget restrictions and a strict cost-control regime are the order of the day. So is IT just going to keep the “lights on”? If IT lead...
24 June 2012
European banks and their IT leaders will spend the next several months trying to run a virtual triathlon (for those interested in the real one, please Google “Frankfurt Ironman”) comprising: Achieve prescribed capital adequacy ratio and survive the crisis- hoping the eurozone is still around Reduce IT (and other) costs Execute mandatory compliance...
27 May 2012
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