Articles

by Ras Sipko The alternative investment industry has had to reinvent itself over the past few years following the financial crisis, which has resulted in the emergence of a number of hybrid schemes that make use of both hedge fund and private equity strategies. Hybrid funds are a response by managers to the challenges of striving to... read more

Earlier this month, Google announced that consumers would have the ability to enlist their own financial card information onto their Google Wallet instead of waiting for their bank to board their card credentials. This approach supports the ‘consumer centric’ model for mobile payments vs. having interested parties such as... read more

By Phil Niles, Director, Product Development, Butterfield Fulcrum    The list of problems in the financial world seems extremely long at the moment.  The most obvious issue is the European debt crisis, but we can safely add a slowing global economy, the pending U.S. “fiscal cliff”, and a host of... read more

According to Patrik Säfvenblad, Investment Partner at Harmonic Capital Partners, despite the industry-shaking, headline-making, flash-crashing repercussions in equities, the impact on FX markets will be more of a rolling thunder than a lightning strike, not at least in part due to the lessons learned from watching equities. Dan... read more

Regulation has a significant impact on how businesses operate across the world, and no industry is more tightly regulated than the financial sector. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 regulators responded with a raft of new proposals intended to prevent a future economic collapse. By far the most broad reaching of these is... read more

Private exchanges and wealth management activities witnessed a substantial growth this past year, as exemplified by the recent expansion of a number of Swiss banking operations in the UAE. This has been due to the country being viewed as a viable alternative to Europe, with a total of 18 Swiss banks currently operating in the... read more

Consumerisation, cloud computing and virtualisation are transforming corporate networks, but for IT professionals tasked with managing this change, the underlying challenges remain the same as when the personal computing revolution first got underway. Ewen Anderson discusses why a well-known saying in France still rings true for... read more

Risk undoubtedly plays a major factor in any business today, but for hedge funds in particular, with the complexity surrounding them, risk of any kind should sound alarm bells.One of the key operational risks that hedge funds face today is spreadsheet risk, which are still common practice but no longer viable in today’s operational environment... read more

The future profitability of financial technology providers is in jeopardy this year believes IDC Financial Insights as IT spending by EMEA banks will decrease to a growth rate of just 2.9% in 2012. The gloomy prediction, made at the Pewterers’ Hall last night in the City of London during IDC’ s 2012 Predictions for EMEA Financial Services... read more