Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra
A poll of CEOs at Fortune 1000 companies conducted by Frost & Sullivan has concluded that the global economic slump is all the fault of 'the media', which is twisting facts and exaggerating economic statistics in a desperate bid to sell more copies and attract more eyeballs. "Because of this, consumers and business have frozen spending, c...
20 February 2009 /retail /wholesale Whatever...
PayPal in Germany recently conducted an interesting experiment to see how far you can get in the offline world using just an iPhone and a PayPal account. The firm equipped two competing teams on a trip from their hometowns to Hamburg – approximately 280 miles – with instructions that they could only pay for any goods and services they needed using ...
20 February 2009 /payments /retail EBAday
The New York Times does a good job of reviewing The International - a new zeitgeist-tapping movie that portrays the nefarious activities of a fictitious international bank dubbed IBBC. As the NYTimes reviewer wryly observes: "That multinational weapons manufacturers can be portrayed as more decent, civic-minded and principled than global fina...
16 February 2009 /retail /wholesale Whatever...
Looks like New York's tenacious attorney general Andrew Cuomo has blown a gaping hole in the latest line of defence used by desperate bank chiefs to shore up bonus pools: ie that the bonus culture also rewards the blameless army of humble branch and back office staff who work hard day-in, day-out to keep the backing industry ticking over. The argu...
12 February 2009 /retail /wholesale
Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein won a lot of column inches for an article in the FT this week when he called on the industry to raise the status of the risk manager from obstructive killjoy to guiding light. "Risk and control functions need to be completely independent from the business units. And clarity as to whom risk and control managers re...
11 February 2009 /regulation /wholesale
Whatever were they thinking of? Wells Fargo, a recipient of $25 billion of taxpayer bail-out money, has been forced to cancel a lavish all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas for up to 40 employees after facing a torrent of criticism from the public and politicians. Wells' rethink followed an Associated Press report that the company had booked 12 night...
04 February 2009 /retail /wholesale
The UK's Faster Payments service has taken a critical panning from the BBC. The Corporation's MoneyBox programme claims the system is in "disarray", as banks implement the technology in a disjointed patchwork fashion. Northern Rock, Citibank and Abbey have not started to make same-day payments. The Association for Payments and Clearing ...
26 January 2009 /payments /retail
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 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
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...
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