Defending the indefensible
For a brief moment in October it seemed as if the world’s financial systems were about to implode. What was once unthinkable, and if we are to believe many financial models, unimaginable, was actually happening. Rock solid corporations were crumbling, governments that had long espoused free market capitalism were rushing to bail out banks, in […]
2008 Banking Awards
Best Investment Services Provider,SwitzerlandBank Sarasin Best Online Investment ProviderEuropeIW Bank SpA Best Brokerage Services Provider,Middle EastUnited Securities LLC Best Trade Finance Bank,TurkeyYapi Kredi Best Corporate Lending Bank,RussiaNOMOS-BANK Best Investment Bank,Middle EastRiyad CapitalBest FX Bank,Islamic FinanceStandard Chartered Saadiq Best Emerging Investment Bank,Kingdom of Saudi ArabiaFALCOM Financial ServicesBest Universal Banking Solutions Provider,Islamic FinanceInternational Turnkey Systems Best Investment […]
acronyms you really ought to know
CRAA credit rating agency of the kind that handed out triple-A ratings like confetti and, as the US Fed and scores of other regulators have belatedly recognised, got us into trouble. EcofinOne of those invisible backroom EU bodies, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council is actually the grand panjandrum of financial affairs that draws up […]
Europe’s financial vulnerability
The most notable innovations of the past two decades have been financial. Like technological innovation, financial innovation is concerned with the perpetual search for greater efficiency – in this case, reducing the cost of transferring funds from savers to investors. Cost reductions that represent a net benefit to society should be regarded favorably. But as […]
Plugging the leaks
With pain and misgiving, the United States Congress bailed out Wall Street in order to prevent a meltdown of America’s financial system. But the $700 billion to be used may flow into a leaky bucket, and so may the billions provided by governments throughout the world. The US financial institutions that went bankrupt in 2008 […]
Who killed Wall Street?
You don’t have to break a sweat to be a finance skeptic these days. So let’s remind ourselves how compelling the logic of the financial innovation that led us to our current predicament seemed not too long ago. Who wouldn’t want credit markets to serve the cause of home ownership? So we start by introducing […]
Ethical business
Research recently carried out by Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS), a research organisation designed to reflect the investment principles of the group of churches and charities that helped set it up, found that the top listed companies on the London Stock Exchange have made great strides in the past five years to tackle ethical issues […]
A waiting game
The OECD sounded cautiously optimistic when it published its latest economic outlook in the middle of September. “Banks appear to have recognised most of the losses and write-downs related to sub-prime based securities,” it said. Yet within days, Lehman Brothers had slumped into bankruptcy protection, Bank of America had stepped in to bail our Merrill […]
