Benjamin Smith’s Treason: Clipping the King’s Coin
Published on 22 March 2020
I count myself very lucky in the current difficulties for many things, including having an Open University MA in English local history to be getting on with. It is 100% remote and can be done on a social-distance or self-isolation basis, apart from missing out […]
Published on 28 February 2020
The Euro is a currency without a Eurozone sovereign legal person backing it. Swathes of Eurozone financial assets are rated and accounted for as if there was such a legal person, whereas the backing for these assets is far less impressive.
The consequence is that the Eurozone
financial system is far less well-capitalised […]
Published on 5 November 2019
I have taken on the role for one year of chair of the trade association for the UK’s Payment Institutions. This is the Association of UK Payment Institutions and I will be attempting, as my main focus, to resolve the issue around bank accounts in the UK.
Since UK banks have started […]
Important forenote
Published on 28 October 2019
“It is a great pleasure to make this address to you as the Managing Director designate of the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator.
I would like
simply to outline the nine focus areas for the first year of my tenure in this
role.
With your
kind permission I will dispense with any flannel about the background […]
Published on 25 October 2019
The UK was a major participant in the financial bailout of the Republic of Ireland in 2010-2014, and will remain so under the Withdrawal Agreement, notwithstanding its leaving the EU.
The bailout loans from the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (“EFSM”), the European Financial Stability Facility (“EFSF”) and the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”) […]
Published on 15 October 2019
Today Global Britain launched a joint paper written by ourselves and Ewen Stewart, entitled “The Irish economic miracle – fact or fiction?”.
Click here to access the paper
The paper exposes how the Republic of Ireland has established
itself as a tax haven within the European Union, to the benefit of itself and
of the […]
Published on 24 September 2019
It is surprising to find nothing on the agenda of SIBOS conference or the SWIFT Payments Market Practice Group about the recent court decision that negates vital content of the SWIFT Message Reference Guide and BIS and PMPG documents on the subject of MT202 COV.
The issue is the extent of the […]
Published on 27 August 2019 and previously by AccountingCPD.net
Many
multinational corporates have a pooling arrangement for the cash balances owned
by their various subsidiaries. For example this could be with Bank Mendes Gans
in Amsterdam, under Dutch law, with every subsidiary holding as many currency
accounts as it needs and periodically transferring surplus balances into them,
or drawing funds out […]
FT story of iPagoo’s freezing by the FCA
Published on 22 August 2019
We have recently blogged about NPA and Pay.UK’s loose governance procedures generally, but we need to focus in on the case of IPagoo/Orwell, and its implications for New Payments Architecture (“NPA”), and whether NPA is soundly based.
NPA is essentially the brainchild of Orwell’s CEO […]
Published on 13 August 2019
Having taken a break from following the governance of Pay.UK for a while, a quick skim underlines the prevailing chaos. We have already written about the ditching of a key feature of ISO20022 XML and the broken governance arrangements that have permitted this.
There is a claim to openness about Pay.UK’s affairs, […]