Is Barnier the anti-McCreevy?

Word has it – from respectable sources – that Michel Barnier, the incoming Internal Markets Commissioner, thinks Stock Exchanges should be part of the national infrastructure. Hmm.
In some eyes, an exchange should assist with the creation of an orderly market.
You can certainly put a case for MiFID creating a disorderly market. Outgoing Commissioner Charlie McCreevy [...]

White collar crime

Nice comment from criminologist and broadcaster Professor Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning: “If you steal someone’s savings or pension you’re more likely to end up with a yacht than a jail sentence.”
He’ll be expounding on this in a full Thinking Allowed programme this afternoon, and there is a wider debate [...]

Power Elites and Banking Reform

Uh oh – FT columnist Gillian Tett is quoting a French sociologist …
This sort of thing could get dangerous, but it looks intriguing. Drawing on her time in Japan, which prompted me to pull her book about the experience off the shelf, she reminds readers that westerners were constantly telling Japan they had too many [...]

What do banking CEOs know, and what is wrong?

“What keeps you awake at night?” In interviews with more than 1,000 C-level executives at firms around the globe – including 54 financial institutions – IBM researchers trotted out that standard question. Quite a number of deep issues, it turns out.
“A very high number of financial services executives, 80%, is figuring out what their future [...]

The Meaning of Words

Among the stories covered last month by the Banking Technology team for our Sibos Daily News sibling was the French Banking Federation’s reaction to a statement by the European Commission and the European Central Bank in early September, saying they would only support the idea of a multilateral interchange fee for Sepa direct debits for [...]

News Coverage of the Banking Crisis

Amazing how fast this has been moving. The Wall Street Journal has provided excellent coverage with in-depth reporting including the corporate politics that mostly occur well out of sight. (The Journal’s editorial page remains, as it has been historically, mostly a source of comic relief.)
Pity the poor weeklies – the news keeps coming over the [...]

Solidarity in Action

There was something a little surreal about this year’s Sibos. While the banking sector’s woes and the demise of Lehman Brothers were on everyone’s mind, it was almost business as usual on the exhibition floor, as vendors announced new products and banks plugged their services, with no shortage of champagne and canapes.
The two bankers I [...]

Banking Becomes Boring. Better?

With banks having lost half a dozen years’ profits since last August you might believe headlines which suggest that they are prepared to scale back business.
Ah, but that does miss a key point. The banks may have lost, but the bankers didn’t lose past salary and bonus pay.
So while it is inspiring to read that [...]

SEC Plays Catch-Up – But Too Late?

 After years of passivity and inaction, the SEC launched a ban on naked short selling of selected financial stocks over a weekend. Compare this to the decades it sat by and let a handful of credit rating agencies enjoy oligopolistic profits as the sole official guardians of investment grading. Now the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, [...]

The Inspiring Laissez Faire American Economy

It’s a lot to be proud of, this independent capitalist system that tells the government to get lost.
Except when it doesn’t.
Headlines yesterday were Fed Chair Ben Bernanke saying the bank will extend its lending facility for investment banks for another couple of months if needed. The Fed is also working with the SEC on improving [...]