February 12, 2012
Which customers are good customers and how you acquire them is a hot topic. There are some very nice private bankers from St. Gallen who failed to head their own advice and are now feeling the full force of the US Attorney General. The quest for a fast buck coupled with cursory due diligence is […]
January 31, 2012
Kweku Adoboli. The $2.3B dollar man. Today seems an appropriate day to look at rogue trading, as the man who brought Ossie Grübel’s second coming to an abrupt end appeared at Southwark Crown Court in London; “innocent on all counts m’lud” said the young man. Now if you are ready to believe that, I have […]
January 24, 2012
Business Flow. Flow, in the form of regular buy and sell orders, is what every trading desk is after, pretty much in any asset class or product. The greatest “flow” I have ever encountered has to be secondary FX at a Swiss bank; all those private clients buying securities in many different currencies. Manna from […]
January 17, 2012
Banking or financial services tends to involve big numbers. Lots of zeroes; things do go wrong and often in spectacular style. Most recently, that nice Mr Corzine, Goldman Sachs alumnus and over achiever extraordinaire, came a little unstuck at MF Global. With every risk of over simplifying, the mess was what football fans call a […]
January 9, 2012
Banks are amazing places. 24. Years, not the TV show with Kiefer Sutherland as the redoubtable Jack Bauer. That’s how long I have been in the investment banking business for. No guns, not even bad guys, Islamic financing but no Islamic terrorists. But still, on reflection a lot of very amazing things happened in those […]