It is more than 20 years since the internet revolution began. And yet not a month goes by without news of new internet-based businesses threatening to disrupt traditional business models. In the first of an occasional series I’d like to point my telescope towards a few rising stars in the firmament of cyberspace. Some of…
Don’t tell ze Britisch but ve really need zem… In a recent reflection on what central bankers get up to when they meet together for some rest and recreation, I attempted to explain what TARGET2 is. This is the settlements system that, since 1999, has facilitated payments between the various Eurozone countries’ internal settlement platforms.…
Schrödinger’s Cat is out of the bag On 04 August I authored an article on these pages entitled Schrödinger’s Cat is SO Clever – about Quantum Computing (QC). Little did I know that that was the very day that a secret group of Google’s scientists chose to publish an academic paper for peer review which…
European bank stocks have fallen to historically low multiples. The earnings outlook is uncertain and the banking environment is in flux. Tighter regulation, coordinated at the EU level, and challenging market conditions have forced banks to refine their business models and strategies – but all this has impacted their Return on Capital. European banks are…
The remainiacs control the media Do not underestimate the breadth and depth of the recusant remainiacs. Their mouthpieces are the BBC, the Economist and the increasingly ludicrous Financial Times. But they have extensive influence propagated by Church of England vicars, luvvies, much of the teaching profession as well as trendy entrepreneurs and a throng of…
The European politicians who perpetually nudge the United Kingdom to get on with it (that is, to trigger Article 50 and to set out, point-by-point, the definitive post-Brexit blueprint) are like junior chess players who huff and puff because their opponent spends too much time making his first move. They can’t understand that considered meditation…
It was bound to happen – and now it has. India’s love affair with technology and e-commerce has spawned an explosion in “fintech”. We can define fintech as digital technology businesses that compete against (and disrupt) – or sometimes support – the activities of established financial institutions. Businesses in the fintech space serve both customers…
Every year in late summer the secretive priestly caste that is the world’s central bankers meets in conclave at the Wyoming mountain resort of Jackson Hole. It’s an inconsequential place really – just an upscale mountain cum fishing resort set in a verdant valley between the jagged peaks of the Teton Mountains and the Ventre…
It is five days now since the world’s Olympians filed out of the stadium in Rio heading home in a blaze of samba. But for the glorious lasses and lads of Team GB their homecoming on golden-nosed flight BA2016 on Tuesday – which we were told was groaning with Champagne – was triumphant. Of course,…
If you thought mining was about digging holes in dry ground, and that the technology required to do that was mature, think again. There are new kinds of extreme miners emerging who are taking mining to undreamed-of places. There are miners who are extracting resources from below the ocean waves. There are miners operating in…
