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Temenos has put out a statement on this acquisition (a busy week for them), pointing out that its partnership with Metavante for the joint development and marketing of TCB in the US is binding upon both parties and assigns to successors in the case of either party being acquired.

But the same doesn't apply to the joint marketing agreement for T24 in the United States that they signed last year. That marketing agreement was initially focused on the US branches of foreign institutions, and is non-exclusive agreement and doesn't involved contractually-binding payments.

I've heard of technology vendors struggling to get their customers to speak to the press about IT implementations that have cut costs and increased efficiencies for the bank - just they type of story you would expect them to be wanting to put out.

But a lot of banks just don't want to be in the press at all. Even if it's for a positive story, the feeling is that if they agree to speak to a journalist about a nice fluffy press release that they will actually find themselves facing much tougher questions from the journalist when they get bored with the nice story and want to delve into other more controversial matters.

On the topic of East Coast vs. West Coast, it seems that at least up until two years ago Bank of America branches on different sides of the country ran completely separately systems-wise, and if you moved from one coast to another you could have to open a brand new account if you wanted to do business with your new local branch.

Hi Olivier,

You didn't miss the feed link, it wasn't on the download page - an oversight on our part. It's now there if you'd like to subscribe.

Elton

If this is true, it's not surprising that he was eventually caught. What's surprising is that he got away with it so long. Is it only now when the banks are really feeling the pinch that they've decided to look a little bit closer at where all their money is?

Hi Marite,

I take it that Dominique didn't manage to go ahead with this auction then?

Regarding the technical issue, we're looking into it to see if there are any problems. But I'd just like to remind community members that commenting on a blog is a two-step process: Once you've written the comment in the box provided, the button at the bottom is labelled save. Click this and your comment is then displayed to you as a type of preview, but you then need to click the publish button below the preview to actually make it live.

Given WalMart's strategy of growing its financial services arm in the US I wouldn't be surprised if it renewed its push to get a full banking license over there. It withdrew an application for a license in June 2007 amid strong lobbying and protests from the US credit unions and banks. But back in September it applied for a license in Canada, and I believe the decision is still pending.

Its UK subsidiary ASDA currently has a financial services arm, but its model is currently just being an introducer to a range of partner financial institutions. Interestingly, its partner for internet savings is Bradford & Bingley. I suspect they haven't made many introductions recently.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking at Tesco and thinking about emulating its push into product origination as well as distribution.

An interesting fact about WalMart: It pays the wages of 1 in every 235 people in the US (1.3 million total). Leaving aside its massive customer base, this gives it a healthy headstart of captive financial services customers.

Hi David, Normally we do provide a PDF or link, when one is provided on a press release, or easily sourcable from the company in question. This one took a bit of digging, but we did find the survey report in question. This story is actually PwC taking a financial-industry-only slice of their annual Global State of Information Security Study (GISS), which came out in October 2008 and looks broadly across industries. You can now see the link to the pdf (hosted on Finextra) at the end of the story. Elton

INFLATIONARY UPDATE

If only I'd invested in spider drawings instead of shares. It seems that the drawing, originally valued at A$233.95 has been sold on e-bay for US$10,000