What is the point of an auditor?
July 25, 2018	Grid, Opinion, Regulation 0
Ever since the collapse of Enron, we’ve seen auditors under question. I’m sure most of you can remember the Enron disaster but, just in case, the company went from Energy King to Futures Basketcase faster than Lewis Hamilton could catch up with Sebastian Vettel yesterday. Much blame was placed on their …
The UK regulators official position on crypto-assets
July 24, 2018	Blockchain, Future, Grid, Regulation 1
Building on yesterday’s discussions of regulating, I got copied on a letter that’s doing the rounds from Sam Woods, Deputy Governor of the PRA (the Prudential Regulatory Authority). It lays out the official position and expectations of the regulator when financial insitutions are dealing with crypto-assets. It makes for interesting …
Mark Carney slams bitcoin
March 2, 2018	Blockchain, Grid, Regulation 2
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has slammed the rise of cryptocurrencies insisting the costs to mine bitcoin is ‘enormous‘ and that the energy consumption is worrying, declaring current costs of electricity consumption used to mine the coins are “double the electricity consumption of Scotland.” The UK’s leading …
Regulating the cryptocurrency markets
February 15, 2018	Blockchain, Fintech, Future, Grid, Innovation, Opinion, Payments, Regulation 0
Someone made the comment on my platform piece about what happens when there are no Jack Ma’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s, as the whole thing is decentralised? I guess that this is logical as my last line was that government control of cryptocurrencies is “not so easy for cryptocurrencies that have …
Even with a bribe, no one switches their bank account
February 1, 2018	Digital Bank, Grid, Numbers, Opinion, Regulation 7
I was intrigued to see the latest account switching numbers for the UK. Switching has been a focus of the Competition & Markets Authority, regulators, government and more, and yet promoting people to switch is not working. According to the latest stats, there are around 70 million deposit accounts across the …
More on #Brexit, passporting and equivalence
January 29, 2018	Brexit, Grid, Regulation 2
Another great Brexit debate at the ISITC Europe annual bash the other day. I was on a panel with Kay Swinburne, MEP Member of Economic and Monetary Affairs; Rebecca Healy, Lead Analyst of Financial Market Structure at Liquidnet; and Michael Cooper, CTO Radianz, BT Global Banking and Financial Markets at …
#Brexit, Banking and Equivalence
January 19, 2018	Brexit, FSClub, Grid, Opinion, Payments, Regulation 7
As usual, the Financial Services Club was delighted to host David Doyle as our starting speaker for 2018, and he presented a fine overview of all the things bubbling as top of the agenda in the European Union’s regulatory plans for 2018. Led by the Bulgarian presidency, the agenda focuses …
Innovation with compliance is difficult
January 15, 2018	Grid, Innovation, Regulation, Uncategorized 4
I’ve been at a few conferences this week, and was amused by an audience poll at one event. The moderator first of all asked: Do you believe that the regulators are in the incumbent’s pockets and protect the industry from new competition? You may find it gratifying that most of …
What does the FCA think about blockchain?
January 8, 2018	Blockchain, Grid, Regulation 1
In mid-December 2017, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a really interesting 32-page paper on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). The timing wasn’t great as most of the City was out getting smashed at Christmas parties, so I thought it best to put it aside until the New Year hangovers …