April 23, 2012
With the pint sized French President Sarkozy about to be kicked into the long grass, it seems only reasonable to move from Swiss muppets to a French one, albeit that at least two of the three bad guys in this story live in Switzerland. As many folks are beginning to realise, Swiss bank accounts no […]
April 16, 2012
With the Olympics almost upon us in London, it seems appropriate to have a Muppet team award. This goes out to the private bankers at Credit Suisse for their tri-athlon performance on behalf of their clients in matters structured products in the holy church of open architecture. (Editor’s note: I was at CS when these […]
April 9, 2012
Kiss & Tell at Goldman Sachs! With the joke about doing God’s Work getting a little old, one Greg Smith has done himself and the gossip columns a favour with that rather stinging and public resignation letter. Now first off, as best I can tell he was not badly treated at Goldman and did not […]
April 3, 2012
Editor’s Note: This is﹟7 in the series on Controls. All that heading stuff looks a bit funny in the emails, so I have dropped it. More. Yes, there’s more. Last week’s blog looked at the three basic elements of good process controls: One Screen, Score and Action. This week we will take it to the […]
March 26, 2012
Editor’s Note: This is﹟6 in the series on Controls. All that heading stuff looks a bit funny in the emails, so I have dropped it. If you fancied talking about Process in a scientific way, you would say it is a function of Procedures and Systems. In the previous blogposts on this subject, I have […]
March 20, 2012
The procedure. Inside a bank that is a topic that has all the appeal of a trip to the dentist. Regulators expect us to have them and senior managers expect us to follow them, not least because that certainly gets them a tick in the CYA box of life. For the poor schmucks that are […]
March 14, 2012
Checklists. A simple trick for a simple business. Memory. We all think we are good at memorizing things. Just like the average guy thinks he is great at driving a car. Still we’d all admit that we are a big forgetful at times. In some professions like being a pilot, forgetting is not an option […]
March 6, 2012
A Goldman Sachs partner worrying about trams. Actually it’s personal and he wants to know who knows what you are doing. There is a Zurich theme to this week’s post. No bad guys, just good ones and ladies. Trams in general are a prominent feature in Zurich and the #11 is a fixture downtown at […]
February 26, 2012
I once lost $2mm of Goldman Sachs’ money and lived to tell the tale. This is a post about Corporate Actions. In banking this refers to events relating to the bonds or shares of a company. At the centre is Rupert Murdoch, or rather News Corp. For once not the villain in the story and […]
February 19, 2012
Mistakes. We all make mistakes. Some are innocent, some are fatal and some are “near misses”. And guess what, even the great Goldman Sachs has its share of mistakes too. One, to the tune of $1B, nearly blew up a major IPO deal. Some quick thinking managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, […]