September 8, 2014
“CFTC fines Merrill Lynch $1.2 mln for client fee errors”. This was the headline from an Aug 24th Reuters article. Reading it was a surprise and it wasn’t; after all, fines for banks are almost an everyday occurrence. What was a surprise was the nature of the fine and the detail of the case. The […]
August 31, 2014
Religion is a dangerous furrow to plough, with every risk of upsetting any and everybody. This week’s post is about religious fervour; a doctrine and how it is followed. It is not about the rights and wrongs of one versus another. In the book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less, the […]
August 25, 2014
This post is inspired by two events. Firstly, an article in the Financial Times on how a US regulator is putting pressure on banks on matters of ethics. Secondly, I was recently asked to address a graduating class from a new academy in India. The FT article was from July 27th: “New York Federal Reserve […]
August 17, 2014
Insight form the coal face; in 2011 UBS had a $2.3B loss created by rogue trader Kweku Adoboli. Beyond the wrong doing and even conspiracy on the trading desk, operational processes failed. I have commented on this case before (see: The 3 Lessons from the UBS case). Recently, somebody more closely involved with those events shared […]
August 10, 2014
Liquidity is very important. This post suggests how a new Financial Market Utility (FMU) would be a valuable tool for the industry; it builds on last week’s post. This is the eighteenth in a series of posts on how banks and FI’s might adapt to new BCBS guidelines on intraday liquidity and FX settlement risk. […]
August 3, 2014
I believe that there is a need for an alternative mechanism to conserve liquidity. It is not possible to do better than CLS for FX flows; CLS is the gold standard. That should not mean that a complementary Financial Market Utility (FMU) would not be a valuable tool for the industry. This post describes what […]