The rise of the Coach in the English Premier League

A new supplementary paper from the ICMA’s European Repo Council, written by Richard Comotto, explains the importance of collateral to the stability and efficiency of the financial system. The paper highlights how the proposed Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) would impact the movement of collateral, posing significant systemic risks and interrupting the flow of money between banks, to governments and to the real economy.

A recent Financial Times special wealth report titled 'Newly floated companies can prove lucrative' featured the ICMA Centre's Associate Professor of Finance, Dr Andreas Hoepner.

If you live in the UK, you may have seen the Channel 4 television programme on 28th February this year (2013) entitled ‘Bank on Dave’. Burnley Savings and Loans to give it its other name, is a company (not a bank) which offers 5% ‘deposit’ rates to lenders and offers loans to those who cannot obtain funding from the high street banks. So how does Dave do this when the high street banks offer no interest at all or perhaps only ½ or 1%? In fact ‘Dave’ is one of a new breed of ‘brokers’ who simply introduce lenders and borrowers to each other. The key difference from banks is that banks have a balance sheet with a depositor contract on one side and a separate contract with its borrowers on the other whereas a peer to peer company has no such contracts and indeed is not even involved at all in borrowing or lending! This is because in P2P, lending contracts are directly between borrower and lenders and the P2P company does not take ‘deposits’ on to its own balance sheet or keep the loans its customers make on its balance sheet.