E-Pricing And E-Trading Technology Benchmark Launched

Having successfully benchmarked most areas of banking operations, a leading investment bank has asked Z/Yen to initiate a new study looking at investment in e-Pricing and e-Trading technology. Banks are investing large amounts of money in these technology platforms in the hopes of benefiting from faster processing times, lower costs and increased profitability. However, with technologies and products developing quickly, many banks are struggling to quantify how much they should be investing in these platforms, and for which products. The Z/Yen study will enable senior management to compare specific technology costs & headcounts with peers, understand how cost drivers compare across the industry and look at some key technology and management trends such as outsourcing, offshoring and near-sourcing. If this is of interest, please contact Mary O’Callaghan on mary_ocallaghan@zyen.com.

Longer Than The Longest Thing

The annual Z/Yen versus The Children’s Society cricket match was held in Holland Park around the longest day, 22 June. And it must have seemed like a long evening to the largest ever crowd of friends and spectators, huddling under the trees in the cool drizzle. Perhaps it was the bottles and pin of superb beer sponsored by Youngs brewery (via George, Giles Wright’s brother) that kept the crowd motivated and audible throughout.

Z/Yen batted first and accumulated 91 for 4. More or less everyone got a bat with several players, even Ian Harris, retiring not out. Restricting things to 15 overs per side saved the game from the impending rain, as well as the use of some handy Astroturf. Z/Yen bowled well – John Davies (Helen’s husband) getting man-of-the-match for his efforts – restricting The Children’s Society to 73 for 6, despite some late heroics by Harish Gohil and Richard Britain-Kelly. So for only the second time ever, Z/Yen has regained the Rashes (risk/reward ashes) trophy.

In a desperate attempt to rebuild the devastated relations with this important client, Ian Harris helped The Children’s Society to win (for the first time ever) its annual Tufty Stackpole match a few weeks later. Ian’s help was mostly vicarious of course (p-lease), lending The Children’s Society Z/Yen’s star ringer Mat for the 45 overs-a-side Sunday marathon.

Son Of Longer Than The Longest Thing

Even longer than the longest thing (cricket) was the Z/Yen team of Fran, Jeremy, Giles, Mark (G), James and Mary running for the second time in the 3.5 mile JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge. While Z/Yen placed 82nd out of 116, naturally Jeremy produced an age-adjusted regression benchmark showing that some performances were above predictions. But it did raise a good few bob for charity.

If The Cap Fits

With the growing global nature of our business, our financial services team has been collecting a souvenir from each country visited. Perversely, they’ve seized on hats. “Easily identifiable for each country” was the plan - you know the thing – UK bowler hats, French berets, Canadian Mountie hats, Moroccan fezs. Since contracting this fetish, they’ve collected eight hats from six countries. However, the strange thing is that they’re all baseball caps - German football team cap, Disneyland Paris cap, Canadian Maple Leaf cap…even a UK Z/Yen cap. Does the US influence know no bounds, or is our financial services team just too stingy to buy proper hats? With our American cap on we’d say it’s the latter.

Ante For The Money-Laundering And Stricter Governance

Mark (Z/Yeandle) is leading a team that has just won an assignment to look at the international costs and benefits of anti-money-laundering activity. This is an exciting assignment and there will be some future announcements. The study will involve a survey of interested parties. Knowing that anti-money-laundering may be a subject of interest to some of our readers, please feel free to contact Mark and open up a discussion, particularly if you feel that you might like to contribute to the survey – mark_yeandle@zyen.com

Likewise, Michael Mainelli has been undertaking some work with the BSI, the international standards organisation, and others on the quantification and rationalisation of corporate governance. Again, this assignment is at an early stage, but interested readers are welcome to contact Michael directly if they feel that there may be areas of mutual interest – michael_mainelli@zyen.com.