The biggest news stories of the week include ...
Davos 2010: More Bankers This Year at Davos, but Mood Remains Glum - New York TimesBankers fight back against Obama - The Independent
Alistair Darling dismisses Obama plan to break up banks as ineffective - The Telegraph
Fed chief Bernanke gets second term - BBC
And our biggest stories of the week are ...
TechnoverloadSo the iPad comes out. Guess what? Just as I bought an iPod, the iPod Touch came out. Now, just as I buy the iPod Touch, the iPad comes out. It’s annoying 'cos I want one, but I just bought one. The wrong one. The old one. And what's even more annoying is the computer that crashes all the time.
SCTs second birthdayToday is the second birthday of SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs), which launched on January 28th 2008 and has now achieved a 5.3% volume of total European credit transfer ... I had completely forgotten about this major milestone until Jonathan Williams, of Experian Payments, sent me this note ...
With so much hullabaloo about banker's bonus taxes, taxes on liabilities, a return to narrow banking, the closure of leveraged prop trading, bankers versus Obama, Sarkozy and Davos, you might miss a few key changes in emphasis. For example, the one I bet you miss completely, unless you're looking, is the speech of the Executive Director for Financial Stability of the Bank of England. Andrew Haldane suggested a radical change to banking regulations this week.
More on remittancesI mentioned a dinner which I chaired about remittances the other day, and the firm that organised the dinner sent me a white paper as a follow-up.
Does PR matter for financial firms?Just found a survey in my inbox today from Broadgate Mainland and the Financial Services Forum. The survey asked 89 folks in mainly UK financial services firms – 52 in PR and 31 marketers - about their views on the measures for evaluating public relations.
Like everyone, I’m amazed by how much pure madness there is in the markets right now. Not the madness of crowds, the madness of bankers or the madness of investors. No, it’s the madness of politicians and regulators. Most of it is a debate about Obama's plans to split proprietary trading from mainstream banking.
Just had an enjoyable morning floating around the City and talking with folks about MiFID 2. Now you may think that’s not so enjoyable, but it has been interesting. For a while now, MiFID has been of concern as it has not achieved what it set out to do, namely to improve trade execution by providing guarantees of processing in terms of the best price, cost, speed of processing. So what do the regulators nee to focus upon as they redraft the Directive?
Interesting article on the guide to all things Europe today, Euractiv, about the Payment Services Directive stating that the Directive “has been transposed in all but 11 of the 31 EU/EEA countries” but "favours banks and card companies over the merchants, retailers and consumers who will be using the scheme.” The article isn't accurate, but does demonstrate that the PSD is moving up the agenda.
And, in other news:
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