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 […]
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, […]
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 […]