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Paul Penrose

Stat of the year: That ABN Amro valuation revisited

A variation on this stat has been doing the rounds for a few weeks now, so forgive me if you've seen it before. I picked this up from the aptly-named Doomsday Report blog. In October last year, RBS p...

10 Dec 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Elton Cane

Vendor risk: The tables have turned

I was speaking to a software vendor last night who recently had a big project go live at one of the UK's largest banks. When the project was first signed, the vendor was quite a small company (though ...

10 Dec 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Elton Cane

Successful Citi tech spin-outs

This story got me thinking about how many businesses have been spun out of Citi's tech and business support subsidiaries over the years. Besides the sale of this unit, and the BPO unit that went to TC...

04 Nov 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Elton Cane

Breaking down a bank's IT budget

It's not often that you see a full breakdown of exactly how much money a bank has spent on different projects within its overall IT budget. At least not in the public domain. But at Westpac's earnings...

31 Oct 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Elton Cane

Conflicting views on software and IT services spend

Further to my recent post -- It's not all doom and gloom for financial technology -- I've been reading a few predictions for IT spending in 2009. Some choose to focus on the positive -- for e.g. sp...

20 Aug 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Elton Cane

It's not all doom and gloom for financial technology

While banks might be cutting rates for IT contractors - see Navjeet's blog post from last month, and the Barclays announcement yesterday - it seems quite a few vendors are still doing well. For cor...

30 Jul 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

Egg looks fragile as Citi begins sell-off

Citi's decision to offload its profitable retail business in Germany could mark the start of a major re-alignment for the US bank's vast overseas network. Citi has announced plans to shed $400 billion...

11 Jul 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

Just how much is Thomson Reuters worth?

Further to my previous post on Merrill Lynch's ruminations over whether or not to shed its 20% stake in Bloomberg (Just how rich is Michael Bloomberg?), maybe we should also be asking: Just how much ...

08 Jul 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

LSE dips its toes in dark waters

Investment firms were distinctly unimpressed by the London Stock Exchange's announcement that it is to work with Lehman Brothers to create a new dark pool trading platform. By mid-afternoon, shares i...

26 Jun 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

Just how rich is Michael Bloomberg?

John Thain estimates that Merrill Lynch's 20% stake in financial information supplier Bloomberg could be worth up to $6 billion. The valuation puts a $30 billion price tag on the company and makes Th...

13 Jun 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

City exposed as institutionally corrupt and morally bankrupt

A broker writes: "Behind the headline-grabbing stories of rogue traders losing billions, the more mundane, day-to-day world of high finance is as wild and unregulated today as it ever has been. B...

06 May 2008
Finextra50 fintech index
Paul Penrose

Granville's insolvency a sign of things to come

The descent into administration of UK business intelligence vendor Granville Associates reawakens the spectre of insolvency for smaller software companies in the fintech space. For the best part of t...

02 May 2008
Finextra50 fintech index

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