Brian Bollen's Blog

Then you find yourself in Vegas

Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge

“Now you swear and kick and beg us that you’re not a gambling man, then you find yourself in Vegas with a handle in your hand..”

UK to stay in the EU – but doubts on Greece, euro

The over-riding consensus amongst portfolio managers, analysts and finance specialists is that the UK will remain within the European Union (EU) in years to come, according to a new study undertaken by Emerging Markets and G10 Independent Strategist Olivier Desbarres.

I will find out

 

Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge

“No one will tell what this is all about.. but I will find out. I will.”

Very short Porridge this morning as I fell asleep on the train after overdosing on hay-fever tablets.

Apax to buy AssuredPartners

Funds advised by global private equity firm Apax Partners are to buy AssuredPartners Inc, an independent insurance brokerage firm in the United States of America.

Euroclear reports robust results

 

The Euroclear group reports what it describes as a robust operating performance for the first half of 2015, benefitting from increased client activity across all business lines and favourable market conditions during the period, reinforcing its position as a trusted provider of open post-trade infrastructure, market safety and operating efficiency.  

Northern Trust claims £650m Brent mandate

The London Borough of Brent has appointed Northern Trust to provide it with global custody, performance measurement and valuation reporting services for its £650m of pension fund assets. 

Northern Trust says this is its seventh appointment under the UK's National Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) Framework. 

Said Conrad Hall, chief finance officer at Brent Council: “We chose Northern Trust because of their well established credentials in the Local Government Pension Service, and their understanding of issues which are specific to the field,”

Earlier this year Northern Trust announced it had worked with London’s boroughs and the City of London, collaborating through London Councils, to establish a tax-transparent pooled fund, enabling the London boroughs to achieve economies of scale and provide a platform for significant cost savings.

 

Cosgrave joins BNP Paribas SS

Paraic Cosgrave has joined BNP Paribas Securities Services as head of sales and relationship management for its alternative fund administration business.

An entirely fictitious interview with ECB's Mario Draghi

Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge

“It is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant..”

We have biting laws

Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge

“We have strict statutes and most biting laws.”

Wells named to head BNY Mellon Manchester

Matt Wells has been appointed as the BNY Mellon Manchester site executive in the UK.

It's not yet drinkable but...

Mint – Blain’s Morning Porridge

“It’s not yet drinkable but, that said, I enjoyed it in a bizarre, masochistic way.”

HSS wins new RWC mandate

HSBC Securities Services (HSS) has been mandated by independent investment manager RWC Partners to provide administration and global transfer agency services to five new alternative funds.

Northern Trust AM wins further NZ Guardians mandate

Northern Trust’s international asset management arm has been given the green light by The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation (the Guardians), the manager of the NZ$29 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund, to manage a Barclays Global Aggregate fixed income mandate, incorporating the fund’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) exclusions.

The meaning of Schweinsteiger

Now that it appears that Sebastian Schweinsteiger is going to be playing for Manchester United, I'm sure that at some point even the least polyglot English journalist will discover that his surname means 'pig climber' or 'pig mounter'.

Translate that as idiomatically as you like for maximum comic effect...you mount one pig...

Pay-as-you-go for Greece

Azad Zangana, senior European economist at Schroders, comments on the Greece bailout agreement.

I wouldn't bet on Murray

I wouldn't put a penny on Murray to win against Roger Federer this afternoon. I think he is playing well, very well, and that he is surely the best British tennis player ever.

But while he is a very very good tennis player, he falls short of being great, largely, and I speak as someone who knows nothing about tennis, because of his predilection for unforced errors.

As a fellow Scot, I'd like to see him do well. I won't, though, be watching, as to do so would be to jinx him. When push comes to shove, I think it'll be Federer doing the shoving and contesting the final on Sunday.

We might well have a Murray as a Wimbledon champion this summer, but I strongly suspect it'll be Jamie rather than Andy.

Investment banking is toxic: discuss

Investment banking is toxic: discuss. This is a subject that I've thought about for 30 years or so now, since the great switch from 'merchant banking' to 'investment banking' began in the mid-1980s.

Merchant banking was a great British tradition, through which people took investment positions with their own capital, which they lost if they got it wrong (see the great Monty Python Flying Circus for the best ever parody of institutional finance, including a discussion of whether a merchant bank should employ even one pantomime horse, let alone two).

Investment banking is, in theory, similar, possibly even, in the right light on a good day, identical. Except it never seems to work out that way, does it? Who takes all the profits when investment banking gambles pay off? The investment bankers, that's who. Who picks up the bill when they go wrong? The taxpayer.

It's a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away since I worked in a bank, but I trained as a good old-fashioned banker with a healthy respect for the source of deposits and an instinctive gut-wrenching fear of the Bank of England. As a result, I have never understood just quite how investment banking works to deliver its profits.

Barclays first announced it was pulling out of investment banking in or around 1987 or 1988, if I recall correctly. I thought the decision right at the time. Despite the excitement surrounding the Big Bang of 1986, I was never convinced that retail and investment banking could co-exist happily in the same organisation.

At the same time as Barclays made its announcement, though, it said that its sterling bond capital market business would continue as it enjoyed such a niche there. I thought at the time that it would begin to rebuild a larger and more hazardous business on the remnants of BZW (Barclays de Zoete Wedd). And it did.

The shocking dismissal of Antony Jenkins brings to a sharp end a period of what might have been false atonement post-financial crisis from Barclays. I don't know Jenkins, but I have heard good things of him from the front line and from the pages of the FT. I am no equity analyst, but I think that if I owned shares in Barclays, I'd take this sacking as a signal to at least reconsider my position.

The FT's Lex column suggests that Jenkins is not the right person to get the bank growing again. At the risk of offending those writing at my alma mater, I think this misses the point. The last thing that Barclays should be aiming for is to return to the status quo that began unleashing havoc in July 2007 and from which we have nowhere near recovered.

The US should never have abolished the Glass-Steagall Act. It was that idiocy that paved the way for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. What price an eventual repeat, I wonder?

Computershare to buy SIX SAG

Computershare Ltd is buying SIX SAG Ltd from Zurich-based SIX Securities Services Ltd.  SIX says the disposal of its share register services and general meetings for third companies will permit it to focus more on its core business.

What planet are some people on?

I just saw this ad for a freelance writer for Renews, a renewable energy publication: The successful candidate will have responsibility for sourcing, editing and posting as many as 20 hard-nosed industry stories per day from the global renewables sector.

20 hard-nosed stories a day, five days a week, from one person? (I'm assuming that by hard-nosed they mean hard news, original stories, rather than rewritten press releases). I can't see that being sustainable, not least because I'm not sure the renewables energy sector is capable of generating (no pun intended) that many stories.

Make or break for Greece

As Greece tables its final offer ahead of this weekend’s summit that will end in either a third bailout or the economic catastrophe for the country the markets are optimistic that this time a deal will be done, comments Angus Campbell, senior analyst at foreign exchange trading platform FxPro.