Published on 2 August 2021
It looks likely that Unicredit will be entering into a shotgun wedding with Mone dei Paschi di Siena (MPS). Unicredit will be compelled by the Italian political and monetary authorities to act as a White Knight.
MPS just failed its European Banking Authority Stress Tests but then it has been flat broke […]
Title page of PSR’s latest emission on the scope and tendering process for NPA
Published on 30 July 2021
What started out as a Temple of Solomon to revolutionise the UK’s payment systems will now be reduced to a more manageable bungalow-sized development. Multiple layers collapse down to one.
The
UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), who started this show […]
Two of the key patagraphs in the Withdrawal Treaty itself
Published on 20 July 2021
What are HM Treasury and the EU playing at? Their dispute rumbles on over whether the Brexit divorce bill is the EU’s estimate of £41bn or HM Treasury’s (or rather the Office for Budget Responsibility’s) of £35-39bn.
The discussion feels phoney. The quoted […]
This is the actual agreement…
Published on 19 July 2021
Below is the text of an article we had published on CapX last week about the bunfight between HM Treasury and Brussels on the supposed size of the Brexit divorce bill: in short, neither of them can know for sure what it is because of the loopholes […]
Published on 26 April 2021
The discussions and calls following the launch of my Bruges Group paper “The ECB’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme” surfaced two areas for further examination.
One was the “pot calling the kettle black” issue: why is the UK structurally and materially in a superior position (even if we have the wrong direction-of-travel and […]
Published on 26 April 2021
I have been in a lot of calls since the launch of my Bruges Group paper “The ECB’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme”.
Two issues keep coming up and so I have decided to write two notes on them.
This first one comes down to the pot not calling the kettle black. Or, […]
Published on 17 April 2021
Walk-through of newly-issued Bruges Group paper on the ECB PEPP programme – the epitome of the failure of the euro.
PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK TO PLAY…
Published on 12 April 2021
We have had a new paper published through The Bruges Group.
It is about the ECB’s new QE programme, called the PEPP or Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme.The sub-title of the paper encapsulates it very nicely: “the undermining of the Eurozone as a free financial market, the epitome of the failure […]
UK Finance’s report on the future of UK payments
Published on 9 February 2021
We have compiled a comparison table between the plans for UK payments as foreseen by:
UK Finance’s “Future-ready payments 2030: a dynamic, purposeful and united agenda for the UK”, of February 2021; The Payment Strategy Forum’s “A Payments Strategy for the 21st century: putting […]
Published on 8 February 2021
Second article based on my interview with the Daily Express about tax avoidance and state aid by companies using bases in Ireland and Luxembourg to trade into the UK…
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1394557/rishi-sunak-tax-hikes-spring-budget-uk-taxes-CGT-boris-johnson