Delivered at Gresham College, London. The summary: Professor Niall Ferguson offers an evolutionary approach to financial history. He questions the impeding of ‘natural selection’ by keeping the financial dinosaurs alive through the life support of monetary injections: “without creative destruction, our economic system cannot be a healthy one.” The view that financial history could be… Read More »
Apparently, the fairly fragmented but resilient world of money transfer is getting consolidated: Sigue, a US money-transfer company strong in Latin America, is buying the money-transfer business of Coinstar for $41.5m. Coinstar’s network allows users to transfer cash to 23,000 points worldwide – and Sigue’s CEO, Guillermo de la Viña, says the acquisition will make his company… Read More »
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For the first time in five years, no big US investment bank appears among the top nine sovereign bond bookrunners in Europe, according to Dealogic data compiled for the Guardian. Only Morgan Stanley ranks at number 10. Goldman Sachs doesn’t make the table. Goldman made it to number five last year and in 2006, and number… Read More »
He talks about ongoing reforms in the financial sector in Nigeria, the new Asset Management Company that the country plans to float (a way to manage the toxic assets of the banks the Central Bank took over last year), and thoughts of imposing a Nigerian version of the Glass-Steagall Act. HT Bunmi
Remember that Ms Dambisa Moyo recommends that African countries raise money through the international bonds market? The Nigerian Debt Management Office is planning to do just that: From Reuters: The head of Nigeria’s debt management office said on Friday he was hopeful of gaining parliamentary approval for its $500 million debut global bond now that… Read More »
I was just thinking of writing a column on the new term limit imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria on bank CEOs when I saw this thoughtful Next editorial: Is the CBN too powerful? In the national confusion over our president who has vanished into thin air, a significant but little remarked event occurred… Read More »
From FT reporter Tom Burgis: Two of Nigeria’s most prominent bank chief executives are to be forced to stand down under new rules introduced by the central bank as part of the governor’s ongoing tussle with some of the country’s most powerful tycoons. Lamido Sanusi, who took over as governor in June, has already rocked… Read More »
The Nigerian government has decided to implement a common year-end for Nigerian banks. The point is that, because banks have had different fiscal cycles they could move money around amongst each other to inflate the value of their total assets. Which was part of what contributed to the banking crisis of ’09. The immediate reaction:… Read More »
From the ASA blog, by Keith Hart: For Marcel Mauss, the years 1920-25 were packed and fruitful. His political party and the Left in general had a real shot at winning power in France and did so in 1924. Two-thirds of his occasional political pieces (Écrits politiques) were written in this period. He was able… Read More »