Archive for: 2007

24 Mar 2007

Barclays Bank: Not treating customers fairly starts – and ends – in the board room

“Lying to customers, mis-selling products, fraudulent accounts, and unscrupulous sales tactics – an undercover investigation reveals the hidden side of a high-street bank.” Wednesday night’s BBC Whistleblower investigation was based on an under-cover reporter’s nine months of employment by Barclays Bank, in a call centre and in a branch. Nobody watching the filmed evidence of shockingly cynical practices could have avoided a conclusion (not over-played by the film makers) that these were a direct response to remuneration incentives put in place by senior management of retail banking.

read more Commentary by Stuart Fowler
10 Mar 2007

“The great global warming swindle”: in denial, or better science, better economics?

Channel 4’s documentary on Thursday night challenging the ’science’ of climate change was a reminder of how difficult it can be to keep your humility and scepticism intact when all around you seem to have abandoned theirs. Unconvinced by the certainty of others, I was keen to see it. The programme underlined three linked themes in the global warming debate that recur frequently in No Monkey Business’s take on the financial jungle: how much people’s opinions are formed on the basis of misunderstood statistics; how ideas follow the money instead of money following ideas; how ill-equipped we are to make sensible choices in the face of uncertainty. This is not an area of expertise for us but there are some interesting parallels with investment and decision making in conditions of uncertainty.

read more Commentary by Stuart Fowler
06 Mar 2007

Why bonds are not good diversifiers: a primer

In a market correction, such as we are experiencing currently, bonds can appear a safe haven. But over longer periods it is bonds that have least to contribute to efficient, diversified portfolios. I touched on this in December. It struck a number of professionals as well as non-professionals as little short of heresy so I decided a ‘chapter’s worth’ on bonds would be a useful ‘primer’.

read more Commentary by Stuart Fowler
18 Feb 2007

Sally Clark and the appalling cost of bad science

Last week’s news of the death of Sally Clark, who suffered the most awful injustice a mother could imagine, brought back all the anger. The case illustrated our poor ability to reason using probabilities. Sally’s fate was sealed not by an expert in statistics but by a paediatrician who used statistics outside his abilities and by a judicial system that failed to question the statistics, the reasoning applied to them and the implications for due process.

read more Commentary by Stuart Fowler
08 Feb 2007

Solving problems in the retail investment market: the FSA consults

In January I went to see the head of the FSA Retail Distribution Review team and some of her colleagues. The FSA set up this team to address the root causes and effects of problems in the distribution of long-term savings products. The fact that the FSA is on this case is good news. But the really good news is that it no longer needs persuading about the root causes. These were stated with surprising bluntness in FSA Chairman Callum McCarthy’s Gleneagles speech.

read more Commentary by Stuart Fowler
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