May 27, 2013
April 2010. London. With its well known complete inability to deal with snow and the ease with which “British Rail” succumbs to something as everyday as “leaves on the track”, the United Kingdom has to be the spiritual home of travel disruption. With that said, something really unique is in the air. Up in Iceland, […]
May 20, 2013
September 2007. The Middle East. Meeting clients during Ramadan is something that is known to be tricky. We knew about this challenge as we set out to talk to clients about our new Islamic financing product. Working through the challenge was something we thought would be better than putting the meetings off and trying to […]
May 13, 2013
November 2003. Mumbai. My first ever trip to India. It’s hot and sticky as we move between meetings in the sprawling metropolis. The juxta position of affluence and abject poverty is s sight that shocked me then and on my subsequent visits. As we meet with our clients I am feeling very queasy and consume […]
April 30, 2013
03:00 Lennox Hill Hospital Emergency Room, Upper East Side, New York City. Its early December 2001. I am far from home and one of a dozen people waiting for help. My throat is aching, I can hardly speak. Not life threatening, but painful. At the very least I need some drugs to make this bearable […]
April 23, 2013
Lunchtime, March 18th 2003. Downtown Riyadh. A series of client visits has brought us to the Saudi capital. Trouble is brewing in Iraq and a second Gulf war is likely. We had thought about canceling the long planned trip and decided that turning up was the right thing for generating good will. After all, we […]
April 16, 2013
03:00, early February 2001. Passport control, Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv. “Welcome to Israel. would you like us to stamp your passport?” It might be late and it is my first trip to Israel, but I am alert to that one. A quick ” No thank you,” saves me from future travel complications. With no […]
April 8, 2013
I have traveled a lot; to the nearest 250 times, I really do not know how many planes I have been on. That travel has taken me to many countries, many clients and many offices. Mostly a simple routine of early start-taxi-airport-plane-taxi-hotel-meeting room-taxi-airport-plane-taxi-home late. There have been some really adventurous outings though. Over the next […]
April 2, 2013
The financial services business is one with many complexities; from product mix to its geographical spread and very importantly the daily interaction that the many players in the market have. It is though, a business like any other and one that requires its operations to function properly every day. This Blog has reported on a […]
March 25, 2013
In the 25 years I have been in banking, one of the major changes is the number of mandatory changes that have to be managed at once and their impact. In the first quarter of 2013, I was discussing this challenge with a potential client, a medium sized Swiss private bank. By their reckoning, their […]
March 20, 2013
A recent New York Times article on an on-going saga at the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) caught my eye. Of course former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has set the bar very high for unethical and generally repugnant behaviour and the general weaknesses of banks in the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and […]