Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation
When regulators define mathematics, the apparent certainty that the science brings is thrown to the wind. Big banks are currently selling off cash reserves, issuing stock and swapping the labels over on balance sheet items, apparently to please the regulators. Are we any safer? Why do some banks have to raise more money? In June 2011, the Basel Co...
20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale Future Finance News Analysis
It’s Sept 2013, and we’re upon the anniversary of Lehman Brothers. Much editorial this week has been devoted to the perceived risk that still exists in the banking system. Haven’t regulators reformed the markets? Regulators have imposed a lot of changes to the way that banks do business and have even more changes still to happen. These changes are ...
We can soon expect the European Central Bank (ECB) to outline the details of the Asset Quality Review (AQR), an examination of some 130 European banks’ assets, to be conducted in 2014. The AQR may well lead to a polarisation of banks, cutting to the quick on their viability or otherwise. As such it may precede something of a cull… Banks get tested...
Ockham’s Razor is one of the sharpest tools in the box of a journalist. The razor is a figurative tool, which identifies the truth as being the view that includes the fewest assumptions. The phrase “Just the facts Ma’am” sums up the implicit rejection of assumptions nicely. Applying the razor to the challenge that authorities and regulators face i...
08 November 2013 Future Finance
The news that US financial services firms are beginning to use peer-to-peer or person-to-person (P2P) platforms as a method of reaching borrowers is a bit concerning. More worrying is that P2P loans are being sold on and securitised. Q: What is P2P lending? A: P2P platforms typically bring together individual lenders to invest in loans to individua...
04 November 2013 /regulation /retail Future Finance
A detail sprang out at me in the recent investigation into Mizuho Bank’s accidental funding of organised criminals in Japan. The bank funded loans via an associated firm, Orico, which acted as the lender, and had in turn outsourced the background checks it ran on customers. It turned out the background checks had not picked up on the criminality o...
On 8 October Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England since March 2009, made several revelations in his final appearance before the House of Commons Treasury Committee. This week, will leave his post. Tucker seems an affable man with a habit of waving both hands as he talks, a little like a conductor for a complex orchestra, which
17 October 2013 Future Finance
In the UK there’s a guy who is about to be sentenced for punching a police horse during a riot after a football match. Football violence, like misbehaviour in other areas of society (including banking), is becoming a thing of the past due to the almost inescapable recording of events. In the case of the football riot, the man pleaded that he had
08 October 2013 Future Finance
When regulators lay out massive fines for non-compliance they flood budgets with money, where previously there was (presumably) little or none. When HSBC was fined US$1.9 billion by US regulators it effectively made a US$1.8 billion investment case within the bank for anti-money laundering technology. However, banks are hard up for cash, what with...
30 September 2013 Future Finance
Banks sell risk. It became apparent that even they could not trade the risk they had on their books in 2008 and they faced bankruptcy. Governments bought it off them, with the exception of Lehman Brothers, which tanked. They do not want to, or perhaps could not, do that again. Yet in the five years since Lehman Brothers, regulators have struggled ...
16 September 2013 Future Finance
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