Lessons for regulators from Chris Froome’s Tour de France victory July 21, 2013 MANY of us have been enthralled by Chris Froome’s Tour de France win, helping restore our faith in this global event. Cycling’s regulator’s overwhelming problem is to maintain the credibility of the competition by deterring, detecting and punishing cheating. We can use the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) as an analogy for the British financial regulatory [...]
Why unpaid internships are a good thing – they help the young get a foot in the door June 24, 2013 MY COMPANY is currently looking for an intern (don’t all apply at once). The reason is simple. We have a job that needs doing that we cannot get our clients to pay us for and, in the current climate, we cannot afford to pay an experienced person to do it. The work we want doing [...]
Once again, it’s the old question: who guards the guardians? June 17, 2013 AS ever, the ancient Greeks and Romans got there before us; they couldn’t conceivably have dreamt of the internet, of the cloud or of National Security Agency (NSA) super-computers in Fort Meade, Maryland, in an as yet undiscovered continent, combing through trillions of phone calls, emails and Facebook pages, but they’d already nailed the gist of [...]
Reality is intruding on the extreme claims of climate change alarmists May 1, 2013 A COMMON feature of debates about global warming is that extreme claims often go unchallenged. At best, criticism is impolitic. Worse, critics are portrayed as tools of malign fossil fuel interests. Being impervious to push-back leads to what I describe in my recent book as climate change derangement syndrome, when normally sane people say dumb [...]
Only real school choice for parents can inspire an education revolution April 19, 2013 IN THE past century, most parts of the economy have seen a fundamental transformation in how things are produced and delivered. Yet schools today function pretty much as they did 100 years ago. The radical progress characterising modern societies simply does not apply to education. And there’s a reason for this. A fundamental difference between [...]
The man teaching the traders how to trade April 19, 2013 Yogesh Chandarana talks with hedge fund manager and trading guru Lex van Dam about competing with computer algorithms, and what to expect from CityA.M.’s 2013 Active Trader Conference How has the trading world changed since you spoke at last year’s City A.M. Active Trader Conference? Last year, the theme was risk-on risk-off. Now markets seem [...]
Deutsche Börse slaps down CME merger talks February 25, 2013 EXCHANGE rivals CME Group and Deutsche Börse saw a spike in trading yesterday after it emerged the two sides had met for talks about a possible merger. German exchange operator Deutsche Börse last night issued a statement denying it was in merger talks, shooting down rumours a deal could be on the cards after the [...]
What the other papers say this morning February 22, 2013 FINANCIAL TIMES Brussels turns up pressure on Libor Banks and broker-dealers ensnared in the Libor-rigging scandal are facing fresh pressure to settle with Europe’s top competition authority as it expands the scope of its probes. In a speech on Friday in Paris, the EU’s competition commissioner will stress his determination to pursue the cases and [...]
How EU regulation has prevented UK horse meat action February 14, 2013 DAVID Cameron’s enthusiasm for the Single Market must be taking a knock, as the horse meat scandal gallops on. It is, after all, one of the fundamental four freedoms of the Single Market – the free movement of goods – that prohibits environment secretary Owen Paterson from banning imports of suspect meat. But the EU [...]
Libor needed reform – but state control of market information is dangerous February 6, 2013 A£390M Libor fine for RBS and a $5bn (£3.2bn) US government lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s. In both the ongoing Libor and credit rating agency sagas, previously free and private information services are being pulled under regulatory control. The unwritten rule is that markets depend on information, that information should be competitively-provided, and that information [...]