Toyota-isation of banking brings reputational risk

Rise of the machines

Business Standard

Robin Hood tax needs carve-out for repo funding

Tax a' La Carte

Reuters

Big boys gain as investment banking shrinks

Retrenchment views

R.I.P. the FSA: the watchdog with little bite

R.I.P. FSA

Latest blast from Basel misses obvious target

Major default

Drip-drip Libor shame beats an industry settlement

(Almost) the oldest profession

Here comes another headache for the equities business. The UK Financial Services Authority is to stop fund managers using equity trading commissions to pay brokers for arranging face time with company management. The regulator&rsquo;s thinking is that &ldquo;corporate access&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t constitute equity research. It's a sensible move that removes a bad incentive for fund managers to shunt trading business to certain brokers.

Access denied

Josef Ackermann has evoked the ghost of Deutsche Bank past. The German lender&rsquo;s former chief executive has criticised current co-CEO Anshu Jain for choosing to pass on a parliamentary hearing on Libor. Deutsche has certainly erred in keeping Jain back &mdash; not least because it has given Ackermann the chance to revive an unseemly Deutsche custom of undermining new leadership.

Chicken belittle

Why would Goldman Sachs take on a big chunk of risk just before year-end? That&rsquo;s what the Wall Street investment bank did when it agreed to place a block of Volvo shares for Renault, taking a near euro 1.5 billion of exposure onto its books.

Block party

Deutsche Bank&rsquo;s co-chief executives are running out of lives. For Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen, December is going to be a month to forget &ndash; and the punches just keep coming. In the last week, Deutsche has warned on its fourth-quarter results, seen offices raided by the police, and been forced to pay damages to representatives of deceased media magnate Leo Kirch. Ahead lies a potentially costly settlement with authorities investigating how banks set Libor. The problems remove any margin for error as Deutsche&rsquo;s bosses seek to reposition the bank for the post-crisis world.

Winter of discontent

The $1.5 billion settlement UBS has agreed to pay for rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate is unlikely to end the Swiss bank&rsquo;s reputational or financial woes. The litany of compliance errors it made over a five-year period paves the way for litigation from other market participants. And, clients may also balk at using the bank for Libor business in future, putting UBS&rsquo;s new strategy for a reduced investment bank under pressure.

Spot fixing

At least one of the three big bank chief executives to survive the financial crisis could be without a job by the end of 2013. Goldman Sachs&rsquo;s Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan&rsquo;s Jamie Dimon and Brady Dougan at Credit Suisse have each suffered setbacks in the past year or more. The two US-based bosses have done a better job of shrugging those off. But Dougan looks vulnerable.

On thinning ice

A rights issue U-turn would be a bitter bill for Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen to swallow. Deutsche Bank&rsquo;s co-chief executives vowed in September to strengthen the bank&rsquo;s finances without tapping shareholders. But US capital rules, non-core losses and a looming Libor settlement have upped the ante.

No pain, no Jain?

Banks will need to face the consequences if they circumvent changes to UK tax law by fiddling with bonus payout dates. It&rsquo;s easy to see why Goldman Sachs and others are considering delaying the day they dole out share awards for previous years.

Dominic Elliott