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“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor, world-wide-web
It's always nice to be able to share a joke with your customer so the other day when I was asked by IT infrastructure staff at a customer about any ‘inconveniences’ our solution would ‘force upon them’. This is my slightly tongue in cheek reply:
Customer: So where do you manage your authentication information?
I don't know, where do you manage yours?
February 17, 2012
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The 2012 AFP Risk Management Survey asked CFOs, corporate treasurers and other senior finance executives about risks that worry them now, those most likely to cause uncertainty in the next three years, and actions they are taking to mitigate those risks
Here is my view on the major points:
Financial Uncertainty Risk. Over 70% of respondents identified this as the primary area of concern. Financial uncertainty risk is made up of:
Liquidity risk, the ability to turn assets you hold into
February 9, 2012
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In 2011 Gresham started a graduate recruitment program as part of a long-term investment in our people and strategic direction. Our initial focus has been in the UK but we expect this program to spread across our international business as we grow.
Four graduates were recruited, three into our Bristol office and one into our London office. They are now six months into their first year and I asked each of them to describe their experiences of life at Gresham.
Antonina
My
January 26, 2012
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“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” Donald Rumsfeld
Taking a lead from Donald Rumsfeld, we know what today’s FX rate is. We know that we don’t know what future FX rates will be. We know that we need to do something about it. We don’t know what we don’t know about the FX deal the
January 23, 2012
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JP Morgan has released the latest 2011 global liquidity survey. See it here http://www.treasurers.org/node/7564
Here is my take on the headline points...
The appetite for yield is returning. I sense we have moved from a focus on just staying in business back to one of return on cash. Since 2008, many companies have just been happy to actually have spare cash to earn a return in the first place, as I am sure are their shareholders. Now that period of grace is over the shareholders
January 13, 2012
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It wasn't that long ago, perhaps a year, when certain banks were really not interested in a company's Liabilities / Credit balances. Let's be clear, from a corporate's point of view we mean Assets and Debit balances but I'll never win that battle.
Things are changing... we've just been offered 150 bps (that's 1.5 percent to most of us) by a Tier 1 bank that is not government owned! Not world beating against some other UK contenders (2% no strings attached) but compares favourably with t
January 12, 2012
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On 25th October, UBS filed it's 6K confirming publicly that its internal controls [over financial reporting] were not operating effectively in either 2011 or 2010. This followed the widely publicised fraud in its Global Synthetic Equities business and subsequent investigation.
Gresham was discussing this very issue at SIBOS and launched Clareti Transaction Control - designed to provide controls to cover some of the risks in precisely these circumstances.
This will certainly put the au
November 4, 2011
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Matthew Dragiff’s blog, The Remittance Data Transport Conundrum for Banks, on Finextra was great and prompted me to record some more thoughts on remittance data from a corporate perspective - Matthew's Blog
He raises some great points about what happens to remittance data when it enters the bank payment system in a standard message type, one capable of holding the extended remittance information generated by the corporates accounting system.
If the bank has adopted such a remittance base
September 30, 2011
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The SIBOS 2011 Issues Preview Edition had an interesting article around Tim Keaney's (vice chairman and CEO at BNY Mellon) views on growth opportunities for banks. 4th on his list (of 4) is FX volatility. It’s not so much the presence of FX that interested me but rather it’s qualification with ‘volatility’. Now that’s the astute bit and where banks should be pushing for growth with corporates.
For corporates, rate changes in minor / exotic currencies have always been of conc
September 27, 2011
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Basel II & III set out the best practice for banks in managing their liquidity. Industry regulators have embarked on the task of defining the measures and controls within their respective jurisdictions that must be adopted by banks. The Basel pillars put in place reserve silos as counter measures to the trading risks of banks, yet it seems that a silo approach to risk management may not succeed and could be unnecessarily costly when credit, settlement and liquidity are a closely linked c
September 14, 2011
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