Janet Yellen’s confirmation as treasury secretary is bound to have a significant impact on a range of issues, including but not limited to: Coronavirus and spending: PPP relief, and the potential for increased synthetic fraud China: Changes in sanctions, particularly related to China, Russia and North Korea Money laundering, and combatting terrorism and international financial…
“The board saw [the former CEO] taking Snowflake to the moon and believed Slootman could pilot the ship to Mars.” Frank Slootman is the CEO of Snowflake, and is one of the most well credentialled CEO’s in Silicon Valley, having taken two previous companies, Data Domain and ServiceNow to IPO. He has also written a…
The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 is the biggest change to AML legislation in the US in a generation. Key elements include: Fincen to collect data on UBO’s (whereas EU saw UBO registers). The precise mechanism of implementation has been subject to many battles and is interesting in its perspectives. Changes the purpose of the…
The former Coinbase Chief Legal Officer, who is now Chief Comptroller of the OCC, issued an interpretive letter stating that it was fine for banks to use stablecoins and INVN’s (“blockchains”) Winners: Crypto Exchanges like Coinbase. Banks will have to have a treasury function to exchange fiat to crypto. Tether and other well known Stablecoins…
It’s not just hedge funds that are driving the crypto price boom: structural pressure from OCC Comptroller Brian Brooks is also important. As we know from the life of Robert Moses, the post-war New York bureaucrat lionized as the Baron von Hausmann of New York, “bureaucrats” are capable of yielding vast power through relatively…
Vaccine Roll-Out End of lock-down by May: in the UK – 2m jabs weekly, meaning large immunisation by April, with some slippage so potentially by May we should be out of the lock-down. We will not be “back to normal” until 2021, as we will not know whether or not the virus returns every year…
This is an interesting piece from Auren Hoffman of Safegraph, “Data-As-A-Service Bible: Everything You Wanted To Know About Running DaaS Companies”. There is a fundamental distinction between DAAS and SAAS companies, as the nomenclature implies. Hoffman cames from LiveRamp, formerly Acxiom Corporation, which is a marketing data company. One of Hoffman’s analytical frameworks is: truth versus…
Markets As of 12th April 2020, the FTSE is at 5842, and the S&P is at 2789. This represents draw-downs of 33% for both indices, with the FTSE down 20% and the S&P down 18%. Demand will be suppressed across retail, travel and energy. Consumer and business balance sheets have holes in that need to…
One important concept is pairing indicators. Which is, if you measure one thing and only one thing, the company tends not to optimize to that. And often at the expense of something that is important. Cost is example of payments and financial services is risk. It’s really easy to give the risk team the objective…