A banana skin may be slippery and may cause you to stumble or even fall when you Stepp on it. Hence, ‘Banking Banana Skins 2010 – After the ‘quake’  is the name of a new study from the CSFI Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation   which is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. As PwC describes it, […]

The establishment of a single market for services and goods – including banking - has for several decades been one of Europe’s core policy objectives. The way towards these objectives is termed integration process. The benefit of integration is to offer new business opportunities in Europe for the banks through more competition and the option […]

In the last one and a half year the financial crisis has changed the views of many people, in particular their perceptions concerning corporate responsibilities and corporate ethics. Taking this into consideration I have to stress that in some discussions I miss an important issue: The crisis’ impact on trust, no matter whether it is […]

A couple of days ago I was involved in a discussion concerning the sense of strategy in the times of financial crisis. I think that is a very interesting question, whether organizations should “think strategically” in a situation with a very dynamic and unstable environment (e.g. like the current financial crisis and global economic recession). […]

A large number of articles concerning the financial crisis have been published these days. In sum all write offs in financial institutions (worldwide) have reached a total of 485 billion USD this week. 42 billion USD write offs can be found among banks in Germany. The amount of recapitalization (worldwide) within banks is 459 billion […]

In mid September we published a short post with the title “the worse is yet to come“. Now, one month later, we can observe worst case scenarios becoming reality. Black swan effects test the survivability of financial institutions. Large banks on both sides of the ocean are in very serious trouble and need massive government […]

Strategic planning is about preparing a business for the future. As we all know, a strategy should put a business in a position to maximally exploit potential chances and to minimize the damage of potential threats.
We all witness the worst financial crisis most of us would have thought of in these days. We also witness […]

The last two days can be described as a dramatic change in terms of the global financial crisis. Not so long ago – or to be more specific: last weekend – a liberal approach seem to rule governmental measures how to tackle the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers did not receive a public backup. But at […]

Last we were informed about US government’s decision to rescue Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both mortgage lenders are under special regulatory supervision now, the so called conservatorship. This event can be described in two sentences, but there are some major implications. We have found the following data that illustrate the size of this public […]

The subprime crisis of us-American mortgages (and its primary and secondary impacts on the financial system) has increased the pressure for mergers and acquisitions in the European financial services market. In particular in Germany major transactions are likely to occur: Postbank and Citibank are on Sale. Some Federal State banks (former Sachsen LB and West […]