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Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Just how much is Thomson Reuters worth?

Further to my previous post on Merrill Lynch's ruminations over whether or not to shed its 20% stake in Bloomberg (Just how rich is Michael Bloomberg?), maybe we should also be asking: Just how much is Thomson Reuters worth? Shares in the vendor rose 48p to £13.07 Monday as brokers began to re-evaluate the company in light of the £3 billion to £6...

/wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Humble pie on menu in Daily Mail staff canteen

Egg on face time for executives of Associated Newspapers. The publisher of UK tabloid the Daily Mail has admitted that a laptop containing financial and personal details of thousands of staff, suppliers and contributors has been stolen. The laptop, which was password-protected but not encrypted, contained names, addresses, bank account numbers an...

/security /retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Cityboy goes Glasto

Cityboy, Beer and loathing in the Square Mile, is a fictionalised account of rampant egotism, greed, prostitution and drug-taking in the heart of London's financial centre. The lurid tome was penned by Geraint Anderson, a former utilities research analyst at DrKW, who grew tired of the City's excesses after a debauched ten year's at the sharp end....

/wholesale Video extravaganza

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

P2P lending and the democratisation of credit

A new study conducted by associate professor of management Paul Dholakia at Rice University's Graduate School of Management indicates that online peer-to-peer lending Web sites may be more attractive to Americans than traditional financial institutions. The study analysed a database of 5,370 peer-to-peer loan auctions from the Web site Prosper.com....

/payments /retail Finance 2.0

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

FSA fishes for plankton in tank full of sharks

The UK's Financial Services Authority has concluded its first insider dealing case in almost two years. The culprit? A Body Shop IT technician who snooped on private e-mails to make a £38,000 profit by shorting shares in the retailer ahead of a results announcement. Excuse me if I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. It's a bit like the caped crusade...

/wholesale

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Black day for black-box technology

UK insurance company Norwich Union has scrapped a pioneering pay-as-you-drive insurance policy, which used in-car telematics and GPS satellite tracking to monitor car usage. The data was used to offer cheaper premiums to drivers who avoided high-risk periods such as rush-hour and late at night. The insurance house had put years of effort into maki...

/retail Futuristic Banking

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Firefox flares up at swift.com

Financial messaging network Swift has been bigging up the switch over to its new corporate Web presence for the past few weeks now. The new site went live at the weekend, so I thought I'd pop over there today and see how it was bedding in. What a horror show - text scattered all over the page, huge chunks that fail to render. The usual teething pr...

/payments /wholesale Finextra@Sibos

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Soaring oil costs force Visa on the back-foot

Visa has announced plans to cut the fees charged to petrol stations in the US, amid growing unrest at the effect that high interchange charges are having on merchant profits. Announcing the move, Visa corporate PR came over all philanthropic, issuing a gushing press release bearing the headline: 'Visa to help ease the pain at the pump'. “While Vis...

/payments Going green

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

LSE dips its toes in dark waters

Investment firms were distinctly unimpressed by the London Stock Exchange's announcement that it is to work with Lehman Brothers to create a new dark pool trading platform. By mid-afternoon, shares in the UK stock market operator were trading almost 13% lower, giving up gains made the previous day on the back of speculation about a potential preda...

/wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Location, location, location

My last blog posting pointed to a recently-filed wireless patent from Apple for the use of GPS location tracking on the iPhone to serve up onscreen menus from establishments in your immediate vicinity. Fancy a coffee but don't have time to stand inline? Simply whip out your phone and select your order from the nearest Starbucks while you walk dow...

/payments Futuristic Banking

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