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20136 Results from 2015

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Are all retail banks evil?

I confess I was a little shocked by the revelation that UK banks had dumped customer data in bins and Chris Skinner's blog was an interesting read. I was disappointed to see the Co-operative bank listed. I expected better. They may have messed up in this regard, but I actually moved to the Co-op bank's Smile.co.uk solely on the basis of their et...

/security /retail

Elton Cane

Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

Algorithmic trading adoption on the buy side

I've noticed a trend among recent conferences I've attended: a growing number of sell-side firms sending along their business development and product managers to speak about algorithmic trading. While these guys are far too smart to engage in an unadulterated sales pitch, and for the most part their presentations have been insightful, there is an ...

/wholesale

John Cant

John Cant Managing Director at MPI Europe Ltd

Digital Alcohol

I am just back from an entertaining and informative session at SunLive07, with particular items of note including two MiFID experts (Bob Fuller of Equiduct and Nick Gibson of ABN) actually agreeing on most things, not least and not surprisingly that rapid decisions by CESR are required on Best Execution and Transaction Reporting to aid implementat...

/wholesale Trends in Financial Services

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Spend fifteen grand, get an iPod

The story on Finextra about Citi's new loyalty scheme caught my eye. For every pound you spend, you are awarded a point and as they add up you can redeem them to get music downloads or even an iPod to play them on. Ok, bit gimmicky maybe but doesn't sound too bad. It's only when you look at the figures you realise you'd need to rack up 15,000 pou...

/retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Ice, ice baby

Icap broker Johnny Black and fintech headhunter Chris Mike have posted a video of their charity striptease at Bank tube station on video-sharing Web site YouTube. As it’s all in aid of a good cause we’ve posted the x-rated vid on Finextra. Just click on the link below and watch grown men cavort to the sounds of Vanilla Ice as innocent bystanders...

/wholesale Video extravaganza

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Zopa introduce a new investment asset class

Zopa continue to send disruptive signals into the financial services space. They are progressing well on discussions to include Zopa loans within Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). This asset class, would be unsecured personal loans. Social lender Zopa is offering Sipp investors the chance to make between 6% and 14% on their cash in the run u...

/retail Trends in Financial Services

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Information revolution? Marketing farce more like!

Anyone taking a tube in London recently will have spotted some striking posters proclaiming an information revolution. Reading between the lines they seem to be having a go at Google and imply it's a grass roots, underground movement - but give little away. Advertising on the Underground isn't exactly cheap or particularly, err, underground so I ...

Cringeworthy marketing gallery

Elton Cane

Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

MiFID compliance burden as a catalyst for M and A

At an event this week I heard an interesting opinion from the compliance head of German bank WestLB. His view was that in the German market, no-one saw any strategic benefits arising from MiFID - only cost and hard work. In fact, he said, with Germany's fragmented financial industry, many would be overburdened by the cost of compliance and this co...

MiFID

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

CEBR bowls a googly with dodgy cricket stats

Apparently, the Cricket World Cup - which officially starts in the Caribbean on Tuesday 13 March - could hit UK productivity to the tune of £200 million. Those clever chappies at the Centre for Economic and Business Research have noticed that two of England’s matches, against New Zealand on 16 March and against Pakistan on 30 March, are on Friday a...

Whatever...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

The end is nigh as DST approaches

As you probably know, in a departure from previous years, Daylight Saving Time kicks in this weekend in the States following the Energy Policy Act of 2005. While this change isn't quite on the scale of the millenium bug, it does pose problems for IT folk. Fortunately the Windows sysadmins have been spared the monthly Microsoft patch cycle so that'...

/security /regulation

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