City Moves for 13 December 2013 | Who’s switching jobs December 12, 2013 Quintant Partners The insurance and technology firm has hired Guy Shepherd as director for technology and solution design. He has over 20 years’ experience developing insurance technology solutions. Shepherd was formerly at PwC, where he was head of its insurance modelling practice. TSB The bank has announced the appointment of Susan Crichton as general counsel. [...]
Trinity Mirror appoints two new board members starting in 2014 December 19, 2013 TRINITY Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror and more than 100 regional titles, yesterday appointed two new non-executive directors to its board. Helen Stevenson and Lee Ginsberg will join the Trinity Mirror’s board from 1 January 2014. Stevenson was previously marketing chief at Yell and Lloyds TSB, and currently serves as a non-executive director at [...]
Inside Track: Rothschild shows independent advisers are on a roll February 13, 2014 AT THE top of Rothschild’s impressive and relatively newly-built London headquarters, a modern building set in the 17th century St Swithin’s Lane in the heart of the City, is an auditorium which the firm’s bankers use to host what are known as kick-off meetings for the flotations they’re working on. Over the past few months, [...]
Inside Track: Co-op board spat highlights need for change March 12, 2014 COMPANIES usually ban the use of social media sites to stop employees idling away work-time on frivolous gossip. In the case of the Co-operative Group, it might have been better advised to put a filter on the internet access of Euan Sutherland, its now-former chief executive. Sutherland took to Facebook on Sunday to denounce the [...]
More competition would be good but Miliband is proposing little that’s new January 19, 2014 ED MILIBAND appears to be in the process of reinventing the Labour Party as the consumer party. His central theme is the “cost of living crisis”. He tells us how he is on the side of consumers in gas and electricity, freezing prices, in banks forcing competition, and in general by having consumer bodies report [...]
Against the Grain: Why the state’s technology bureaucrats must realise that most things fail December 11, 2013 THE PHRASE “industrial policy” seems to take us back decades. In 1964, the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s powerful new catchphrase was the need for Britain to embrace the “white heat of the technological revolution”. Sadly, by the 1970s this vision had deteriorated into a list of institutions, stuffed with dull businessmen and trade [...]
Challenger banks face a Capital Catch 22: It’s time to level the playing field February 5, 2014 WANDER down any high street and you’ll see those well-known chain restaurants offering appetising food at a reasonable price. Then there are the one-off, often family-run eateries with their own unique menu – perhaps with a speciality that will one day become a staple of that household-name restaurant over the road. The larger chains, of [...]
Against the Grain: Why the state’s technology bureaucrats must realise that most things fail December 3, 2013 THE PHRASE “industrial policy” seems to take us back decades. In 1964, the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s powerful new catchphrase was the need for Britain to embrace the “white heat of the technological revolution”. Sadly, by the 1970s this vision had deteriorated into a list of institutions, stuffed with dull businessmen and trade [...]
Banking competition is already fierce – but technology will intensify it further January 15, 2014 FOR ALL the talk of competition in banking, ask yourself: have you ever felt that there is not a product for you on the market? Or that your choices are constrained? I have a current account with the same bank my family has used for years. But when it comes to my savings, I shamelessly [...]
Brand Index: Retail bank’s split gives each group plenty to work on September 10, 2013 WITH the splitting of Lloyds Banking Group and the launch of the TSB this week, the next few months will be an important time for the two banks. Lloyds will look to use the opportunity to boost public perceptions of its brand. TSB will perhaps hope to trade off the positive associations of a different [...]