Everyone’s A Winner

Z/Yen has just announced the results of its first two 2005 Operational Performance Studies. The results were keenly awaited by banking operations professionals worldwide (the phone never stopped ringing with requests for early copies) and Z/Yen is delighted to announce that in Europe, CSFB (equities - for the second year) and ABN AMRO (fixed income) have been voted best operational banks.

In the USA, the awards went to JP Morgan (equities) and Morgan Stanley (fixed income), and the Derivatives and Asia awards will be announced later in December.

Client feedback has included, (we like this one) “thanks again for your exemplary work, leadership, and diligence and particularly the extreme effort to turn these results around so quickly back to us”.

The study teams this year (Smith, Birch, Guerriero, Pitcher, Wright, Yeandle, Long, Taylor, Avrami, Davies) collected and analysed 50,000 rankings from over 200 Investment Managers and Hedge Funds in 20 countries.

London Calling

The Corporation of London has just published a piece of research conducted by Z/Yen into the competitive position of international financial centres. We asked senior decision makers about the key factors of competitive advantage, and how the world's major financial centres ranked against these criteria. The availability of skilled personnel and the regulatory environment are the two most important factors.

London and New York are the only two genuinely global financial centres. Respondents believe that other financial centres such as Frankfurt, Paris and most of the Asian centres will remain national financial centres.

Part of the continuing appeal of London to foreign companies is its cosmopolitan status. Frankfurt & Tokyo, for example, are primarily markets for domestic participants to which foreign players are granted access. London, and to some extent, New York are characterised by foreigners trading with each other.

Views on a third global financial centre are split. Most people agree that if a third global financial centre develops it is most likely to be in China and probably in Shanghai. Respondents thought it unlikely that Hong Kong, Singapore or Tokyo will become more than regional financial centres.

Global financial centres have emerged around pools of market liquidity. Liquidity is very hard to move. Now that London is established as a global financial centre, it will take a number of significant factors, acting over a long period to alter the status quo. The full report can be downloaded here.

Standard Issue

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) has appointed Michael Mainelli as a Non-Executive Director. Michael will help UKAS develop the profile of accreditation in the business community and across government. UKAS’s key role is as the “auditor of auditors” or the “measurer of measurers”.

UKAS is a commercial, non-profit-distributing company with an annual turnover in excess of £10m whose customers range from the BSI to small laboratories. Customers are firms who certify anything from ISO9000 to ISO14000 through to gas, electrical or fire fittings. For further information on UKAS and the role of accreditation go to: www.ukas.com

Z/Yen's work on ISO9000, ISO14000, the Marine Stewardship Council's sustainable fish standards and the ISEAL Alliance, as well as many other certification schemes, paved the way for Michael gaining his expertise in certification & accreditation. Welcoming Michael’s appointment, Lord Lindsay, Chairman of UKAS, said, “We are enormously pleased to have access to Michael’s considerable expertise.” On the other hand, folks at Z/Yen were wondering who expertises the experts??? As Juvenal noted, “Quis custodiet…”

Better Mousetrap

You’ve read plenty about PropheZy being used to great effect in financial services, but now Z/Yen is experimenting with PropheZy in charities. In one case, Z/Yen is researching the use of PropheZy to help direct mail campaign effectiveness, working in collaboration with a major fundraising charity with a hot reputation for its direct marketing performance. Our initial results, based on historic data, are very encouraging and we are now planning a real trial on a direct mail campaign early in the New Year. Ian Harris, Mary O’Callaghan, Jez Horne & Mark Yeandle are all involved. Watch this space for more news and/or contact Ian Harris for further details.

Never one to miss an opportunity for a sound bite, Ian Harris is upbeat on the use of PropheZy for direct marketing analytics. “If, as we suspect, PropheZy is effective for improving this charity’s direct mail campaign’s performance,” says Ian, “PropheZy will have proved to be, potentially, a ‘better mousetrap’ for the analytical planning of any direct marketing campaign, charity sector or commercial sector.”

Short Dull Article Update

Following the very dull piece on electronic binding in the last issue of Now & Z/Yen and the call for even duller material, competition entries have, quite literally, failed to flood through. One reader, however, pointed us to the Dull Men’s Club website, which must be one of the wackiest places in the whole of cyberspace. The reader took pains to point out that part of the piece, “Airport Carousels”, astonishing in its banality, is attributed to a certain Ian Harris reporting from weird and wonderful places such as Bhutan and Laos. Not our Ian…..surely not our Ian?

Seasonal Greetings

And a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our readers.