Acquisition of RiskMetrics by MSCI Barra could standardise VaR measurement and increase systemic risk, says EM Applications

London - 9 March 2010 Bob's Guide

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) today published its Financial Risk Outlook (FRO) outlining the main risks and issues present in its operating environment, affecting firms, markets and consumers. 

This year’s FRO is divided into four sections:

My partners at Siag in Madrid are in a development process, at the finalisation of a Software product launch, for a new product called 'Price Manager', I get to see early screen shots, now and again, just glimpses of the future as it waits to be rolled out, growling like all good cyborgs do!

The special European Council of 11 February 2010 was intended originally to provide the heads of state and government with an opportunity to reflect on the longer term problems of the European economy and begin to define a strategy to cope with them. In fact it was totally overshadowed by the Greek crisis.

THE CHALLENGE FOR BANKING LINE MANAGEMENT 

In a recent blog post, which has been very popular I must say, I went off on one of my "wax lyrical" rants about the sorry predicament of line management in banking today. If I refer my own twitter feed I must be one of the few people worldwide to offer a scrap of sympathy to that beleaguered community but fear not chaps I am on your side (if you want!?). My blog post on banking line management is here;-

Fannie Mae needs another $15 billion in federal assistance, bringing its total to more than $75 billion. And worse, the mortgage finance company warned its losses will continue this year.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on further possible changes to the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) aimed at strengthening the resilience of the banking sector and the financial system as a whole.

The scale of intervention to support the banks in the UK, US and the euro-area during the current crisis totals over $14 trillion or almost a quarter of global GDP. It dwarfs any previous state support of the banking system. These interventions have been as imaginative as they have large, including liquidity and capital injections, debt guarantees, deposit insurance and asset purchase.

Market (Price) Risk - Abstracting the Liquidity Component

An anemic government auction of 30-year bonds closed out a weak round of debt sales with low demand on the far end of the debt yield curve.

The $25 billion auction fetched a whopping 4.72 percent high yield on weak demand, reflected in a 2.36 bid-to-cover ratio that compares demand for each dollar auctioned. The average is about 2.50.

Are we about to enter a third, and this time fatal, leg of the financial crisis? The problems of euroland which have so unsettled markets this week – and in particular those of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the "pigs", as they have become known in financial circles) – are worrying enough in themselves

European leaders said they were ready to support heavily indebted Greece to stave off a crisis in the euro zone, but disappointed markets by failing to offer any details on how aid would work.

Hector Sants is to step down as chief executive of the Financial Services Authority this summer after three years in the job, it was confirmed this morning.

Léo Apotheker, SAP’s chief executive, resigned on Sunday night in a management reshuffle at the world’s largest business software maker.

The company said Mr Apotheker would be replaced with Bill McDermott, head of field organisation, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development, in a joint-CEO structure.

Cushman and Wakefield published today their latest Economic Pulse report addressing Real Estate investors. There was in interesting figure on government debt.

Eurozone governments have borrowed a record €110bn from the markets so far this year, forcing up borrowing costs for those countries with the weakest public finances as they pay a heavy price for their ballooning debt levels.

Investors warned that the yields, or interest rates, they will demand to lend to Greece and other peripheral economies, such as Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy, will continue rising until they are convinced they have put their finances in order.

Today’s economic environment is driving many enterprise IT organizations to
consolidate, that is, to reduce the numbers of vendors of different technologies and to
reduce the resources used by those technologies within their data centers. Consolidation
means different things at different levels: it can be reducing the number of physical
servers to run a given workload; it can be combining multiple data stores into a single
larger storage facility; it can be the replacement of multiple applications of redundant

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