Latest opinions that Paul Penrose has shared on Finextra

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Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

Member since

06 Oct 2006

Location

London

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Paul's opinions

P2P lending and the democratisation of credit

A new study conducted by associate professor of management Paul Dholakia at Rice University's Graduate School of Management indicates that online peer-to-peer lending Web sites may be more attractive to Americans than traditional financial institutions. The study analysed a database of 5,370 peer-to-peer loan auctions from the Web site Prosper.com....

02 July 2008 /payments /retail Finance 2.0

FSA fishes for plankton in tank full of sharks

The UK's Financial Services Authority has concluded its first insider dealing case in almost two years. The culprit? A Body Shop IT technician who snooped on private e-mails to make a £38,000 profit by shorting shares in the retailer ahead of a results announcement. Excuse me if I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. It's a bit like the caped crusade...

02 July 2008 /wholesale

Black day for black-box technology

UK insurance company Norwich Union has scrapped a pioneering pay-as-you-drive insurance policy, which used in-car telematics and GPS satellite tracking to monitor car usage. The data was used to offer cheaper premiums to drivers who avoided high-risk periods such as rush-hour and late at night. The insurance house had put years of effort into maki...

01 July 2008 /retail Futuristic Banking

Firefox flares up at swift.com

Financial messaging network Swift has been bigging up the switch over to its new corporate Web presence for the past few weeks now. The new site went live at the weekend, so I thought I'd pop over there today and see how it was bedding in. What a horror show - text scattered all over the page, huge chunks that fail to render. The usual teething pr...

30 June 2008 /payments /wholesale Finextra@Sibos

Soaring oil costs force Visa on the back-foot

Visa has announced plans to cut the fees charged to petrol stations in the US, amid growing unrest at the effect that high interchange charges are having on merchant profits. Announcing the move, Visa corporate PR came over all philanthropic, issuing a gushing press release bearing the headline: 'Visa to help ease the pain at the pump'. “While Vis...

27 June 2008 /payments Going green

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 in the UK stock market operator were trading almost 13% lower, giving up gains made the previous day on the back of speculation about a potential preda...

26 June 2008 /wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Location, location, location

My last blog posting pointed to a recently-filed wireless patent from Apple for the use of GPS location tracking on the iPhone to serve up onscreen menus from establishments in your immediate vicinity. Fancy a coffee but don't have time to stand inline? Simply whip out your phone and select your order from the nearest Starbucks while you walk dow...

26 June 2008 /payments Futuristic Banking

The iPhone as money

Apple filed a rather fascinating patent application in December last year for a wireless communication system. "A processing system is described that includes a wireless communication interface that wirelessly communicates with one or more wireless client devices in the vicinity of an establishment. The wireless communication interface receiv...

13 June 2008 /payments /retail Futuristic Banking

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 Thomson's $8.8 billion buy-out of Reuters seem a positive snip. It also offers an insight into the personal net worth of the company's eponymous founde...

13 June 2008 /wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Children of the revolution

I took delivery of a new home computer this week. First task: set up the Internet connection, download Firefox and check my e-mail. I then let the kids (ages 9-16) loose on the machine. First task: log-on to social network and download the open source equivalent of MSN for instant messaging. E-mail? That's so last century. This is the next generat...

11 June 2008 /retail Finance 2.0