It seems that Z/Yen is getting more and more press on a whole variety of topics. Mark Yeandle got trade coverage on Best Execution Compliance Automation. Ian has been speaking on credit unions. Michael and Stephen Martin feature heavily in The Economist of 19 May’s banking survey for their article “Why Bother to Be Better? Strategically Stagnant Personal Current Accounts”. Then Michael gets in the FT on 9 June about online betting. Jeremy gets us in the same FT issue and Institutional Investor lauding CSFB as the leading pan-European brokerage firm in our Operational Performance of Brokers study. Then Jeremy and James Pitcher start the PACE studies – Performance Analysis of Client Efficiencies – where they are seeing what brokers think of their clients on the buy-side, with the hope of more press. So Michael winds up on Channel 4 News on 15 June, again about online betting and the big poker flotations.

However, our sympathies go to our overseas readers. We realise that many of you fled these shores in order to avoid such intensive coverage of Z/Yen when you could get the distilled version from this superior newsletter. Unfortunately for Michael’s American relations, he turned up on the American Public Media radio programme, Marketplace - “Fleet Street’s New Bankers” (19 May 2005) about the “Wimbledon effect” in the UK financial services industry. We suspect that quite a few car radios were abruptly turned off on interstates across the USA in order to await this edition of Now & Z/Yen. Many thanks to our devoted readers.