August 21, 2012
Money and banking. The two go together. Banking is a schizophrenic business. There is some truth to the notion that people in banking earn a lot mroe money than people in other professions. There is a also plenty of truth to the observation that if you are in banking, there are plenty who earn more […]
August 14, 2012
After all the fun of London 2012, we are now in what in journalism is often referred to as “silly season”. The holiday month of August, where real news is in short supply. A light hearted look at some banking stories seems appropriate. It is often said that there are three types of money: getting […]
August 8, 2012
Standard Chartered. They are the whipping boy du jour suffering at what I term “long hand of American imperialism”. This week they stand accused of all sorts of wrongdoing connected to Iran. Before them Credit Suisse, Lloyds, ABN and Barclays have been pressured in to handing over fistfuls of green backs to Uncle Sam for […]
July 31, 2012
Suicide, or at least attempted suicide, is the inspiration for this week’s Blog post. Iowa in the mid-West of the USA is a long way from the financial capitals of the world, but a local tragedy provides a lesson for everybody who works in financial services. The Story PFGBest aka Pergrine is a small brokerage […]
July 10, 2012
“What gets measured gets managed.” That saying is as well known in banking as it is in any other industry. Less well articulated is the obvious first derivative of that: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Sometimes in banking we do that well; we are pretty good at differentiating between what is […]
July 6, 2012
I have commented in previous posts on the important role that allocations play in driving good behaviour . They are though not the global panacea for all banking ills; no degree of sophistication would have influenced the current trifecta of bad behaviour in the financial markets around LIBOR fixing (sic), IT snafus at RBS or […]