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Paul Penrose

Head of Research

Finextra

Member since

06 Oct 2006

Location

London

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Paul's opinions

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is

Henry Blodget, the former star techstock analyst who knows a thing or two about investment fraud, posts an interesting insight to the Madoff affair on his Clusterstock blog. "Specifically, we're hearing that the smart money KNEW Bernie had to be cheating, because the returns he was generating were impossibly good. Many Wall Streeters suspect...

19 December 2008 /regulation

Bernie Madoff's take on over-regulation on Wall Street

Some choice quotes from squeaky-clean Bernie Madoff on the trials of doing business in the modern financial system. "Whenever I go down to Washington and meet with the SEC and complain to them that the industry is either over-regulated or that the burdens are too great they all start to roll their eyes just like our children do when we talk ab...

18 December 2008 /regulation /wholesale Video extravaganza

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 paid $100 billion for ABN Amro (80% cash), and faced a fair amount of shareholder opposition to the valuation. If they were to use that money today, ac...

10 December 2008 /retail /wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

John Thain: The dumbest act on Wall Street

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain has a reputation as the smartest guy on Wall Street. But his request to the bank's board for a $5-$10 million bonus for rescuing Merrill Lynch from a fate worse than Lehman was not only crass and insensitive, it was also just plain dumb. Does Thain - a multi-millionaire from his days at Goldman Sachs - really need the...

09 December 2008 /wholesale

CheckFree hack sets off alarm bells

The Washington Post's Security Fix blog has dug a little deeper into the attack on CheckFree's bill payment Website last week. CheckFree has admitted that hackers had, for several hours, redirected visitors to its customer login page to a Web site in Ukraine that tried to install password-stealing software. But the company has said little else abo...

08 December 2008 /security /retail

Beat the crunch this Christmas: Eat peanuts, drink beer

The Finextra news desk is groaning under the weight of Christmas-themed press releases, as companies desperately try to generate some extra seasonal income during the economic crisis. One of the more bizarre examples to hit the newswires this week was an urgent dispatch from the American Peanut Council, which advises cash-strapped consumers to beat...

02 December 2008 /retail /wholesale Whatever...

Mumbai: Indian government gets jitters about Twitter

The Indian government has asked for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediately. "ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations," a tweet says. At least, that's what the BBC's Mumbai Live Events page is reporting. The potential use of Twitter and other communications technologies by terror...

27 November 2008 Finance 2.0

Contactless payments make prime time TV debut

Contactless payment technology is getting a big push in the UK courtesy of Barclays, which has started running a prime-time TV advertising campaign. The ad features an office drone travelling home from work in a giant water slide, picking up groceries on the move and passing through payment tolls by waving his card at a reader. It's been an undergo...

20 November 2008 /payments Video extravaganza

Lehman's IT legacy

Lehman Brothers ran its operations through a worldwide network of 26,666 servers and employed an IT department comprising some 6000 staff. This technological legacy has created some interesting operational challenges for the administrators charged with overseeing its affairs, as this SEC filing from restructuring experts Alvarez & Marsal makes...

19 November 2008 /wholesale

State Street CEO shows his expense management savvy

If State Street CEO Ron Logue is serious about his new expense management programme, he might first want to start with the annual salary and severance package of none other than...Ron Logue. The CEO of the Boston-based financial conglomerate pocketed no less than $27 million in total compensation last year. What's more, if the firm gets taken over ...

17 November 2008 /wholesale