In July last year David Cameron promised to abolish the main City regulator, the FSA, and today his chancellor did just that.

George Osborne said the FSA will lose its name and powers, which will be split among several new regulators, chiefly the Bank of England.

The FSA will continue until 2012, by which time many of its staff will have transferred to one of two new Bank of England supervision units, with the remainder decamping to a consumer protection and markets agency and a financial education body.

Supervision will be split between the Bank of England and the consumer protection agency.

Within the Bank, Britain’s banks, building societies, insurers and other financial companies will be regulated, with a second body given overall charge of watching for trends in the industry that could trigger another financial crisis.

Hector Sants, the current boss of the FSA, will take on the role of chief executive of the first overseeing agency, which will be called the Prudential Regulatory Authority. It be separately constituted as a subsidiary of the Bank of England.

The second, more overarching, body, the Financial Policy Committee, will be firmly within Threadneedle Street. Sants will be a key figure on the body along with his new deputy, Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s chief cashier.

However, the governor of the Bank, Mervyn King, will chair both the committee and the prudential authority, and is expected to exercise ultimate control over all areas of supervision.

In effect, the FSA will be subsumed within the Bank of England and its senior staff will report to committees under the ultimate control of the governor.

Even the FSA’s offices in Canary Wharf are under threat. The Bank has about 500 staff working behind its austere high walls, sandwiched between the Royal Exchange and the old NatWest headquarters on Lothbury. It is understood that King is uncomfortable that the majority of his new staff will be several miles away on the Isle of Dogs and will be seeking ways to bring them into the City, if not to Threadneedle Street.

King said he was delighted Sants had agreed to tear up his resignation notice, which he offered earlier this year, and agreed to join him at the Bank. “In the new regime, regulation will reflect two different, though complementary, perspectives,” he said.

“The first, as now, is a bottom-up perspective, focused on setting institution-specific capital requirements. Those would be fixed requirements that banks could not breach.

“The second is an overall perspective, with a set of system-wide capital requirements that vary over the economic cycle. Judgments on the level of these capital buffers will be part of the remit of the new Financial Policy Committee.

“The prudential regulator, with its micro-prudential responsibilities, and the Financial Policy Committee, with its macro-prudential responsibilities, will need to work closely together, and that is one reason why it is sensible that they are both in the central bank,” King said.

Only weeks before the election, the City minister, Mark Hoban, was telling bankers that a new Conservative government would spend at least six months listening to their views before making a decision on whether to scrap the FSA.

But the chancellor, George Osborne, said further debate on the overall structure was unnecessary and he was ready to push ahead with radical reform.

Behind the revamp are several key figures, including Sir James Sassoon, the Eton and Oxford-educated former SG Warburg banker, who was an adviser to Labour until 2008 when he quit to join the Tories. He wrote a document last year calling for the FSA to be abolished. Sassoon, who became a Treasury minister in the new government, is expected to play a key role in pushing through the reforms.

Cameron said last year that the decisions that led to the financial crisis represent “a policy crisis of historic proportions” and “in the United States, they have called on the Federal Reserve, and it is time to call on the Bank of England”.

MUST DO

Engage in writing intensive coursework
In this job, your writing, style, grammar, spelling, and wordsmithing skills are crucial. You will be most marketable if you have engaged in some intensive writing work while at your undergraduate institution. Make sure you have at least 2 stories to share about meaningful writing you have done.
- Possible coursework includes: writing seminars or junior colloquiums.
- Volunteer to help a professor who conducts lab research and write up a report.
- If your school has the option, elect to complete a senior thesis. Choose a topic that you are thoroughly interested in as this will be a year-long time commitment. Likewise, choose an advisor who will be willing to spend time with and with whom you are compatible.

Take a research-intensive course or sign up for a research project
Are you resourceful in finding the information you need? In most work environments you will not be told explicitly where to go to get the information you need. Initiative, resourcefulness, and an ability to synthesize research are important traits employers are looking for in their hires.
Make sure you have at least 2 stories to share about meaningful research you conducted, how you identified the appropriate sources, and the conclusions you reached.
- Volunteer to help a professor who teaches a marketing, finance, or other business course.
- Volunteer to do some market research or competitor analysis for a local business.
- Take courses that require research projects.

Seek finance related work that will require the development and analysis of corporate financial forecasts and statements
The income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements are the primary components or financial underpinnings of any company. You should be able to look at these financial statements and with some calculations, draw accurate conclusions about the operations of a company, identify inconsistencies, problems and opportunities. This analysis also includes calculating basic ratios such as return on equity, return on assets, days receivable, etc. Production of a financial forecasting model that projects a company’s income statement, balance sheet and cash flows 3-10 years is quite important. Producing a model that integrates all three financial statements into each other and is driven by a set of changeable assumptions will give you an incredible understanding of each line item on a financial statement.

Take a course to build understanding of key business calculations
Financial ratios and other calculated metrics offer valuable snapshots of the health of an organization and business trends. Everyone from managers to investors and lenders looks at company ratios. The more senior you are in an organization, the more your compensation will likely be tied to your ability to positively impact these ratios within your company.
Any number of books or websites can offer you the simple formulas to calculate common ratios, but understanding what these ratios means starts with an entry-level course covering financial statements. Courses that might be good starting points might have titles similar to the following:
- Financial Statement Analysis.
- Financial Modeling.
- Marketing course requiring building demand models.
- Introduction to Financial Accounting.
- Introductory Accounting.

Take an additional corporate finance course such as investment management, valuation techniques, financial management or real estate financing
If you have already taken an introductory corporate finance course, you should seriously consider advancing your knowledge. Although not a requirement, the more knowledge you have, the more comfortable you will be in the interview process. The ability to be highly conversant in finance will improve your prospects tremendously.

SHOULD DO

Join toastmasters or the debate team to build and exercise your powers of persuasion
You will need to interact with other functional areas that don’t report to you or your boss, so persuasive abilities are key to achieving product goals. If you aren’t a natural salesperson, don’t worry. There is actually a lot of “science” to persuasion, and these techniques can be learned. The key is to put them into practice after you learn them. You’ll be surprised how much can be negotiated.

Take a course or workshop on public speaking to build your powers of persuasion and presentation skills
You will need to interact with other functional areas that don’t report to you or your boss, so persuasive abilities are key to achieving product goals. If you aren’t a natural salesperson, don’t worry. There is actually a lot of “science” to persuasion, and these techniques can be learned. The key is to put them into practice after you learn them. You’ll be surprised how much can be negotiated.

Check with career services to identify an individual or group locally that does strategic planning and offer to work for free
This will give you practical experience performing quantitative and qualitative analysis of data to address businss problems. Both quantitative (e.g. estimating market size, profitability) and qualitative factors (e.g. competition, customer tastes) must be weighed to determine the best approach to achieving an organization’s long-term goals. In this job, you must be adept at identifying key variables and translating them into models and other forms of analysis to inform decision-making.

Ask professors you have if they are working on any projects you can help with requring collecting and analyzing data, particularly if it is around a business issue
This will give you practical experience performing quantitative and qualitative analysis of data to address businss problems. Both quantitative (e.g. estimating market size, profitability) and qualitative factors (e.g. competition, customer tastes) must be weighed to determine the best approach to achieving an organization’s long-term goals. In this job, you must be adept at identifying key variables and translating them into models and other forms of analysis to inform decision-making.

Get a summer experience doing strategy consulting, equity research or strategic planning
This will give you practical experience performing quantitative and qualitative analysis of data to address businss problems. Both quantitative (e.g. estimating market size, profitability) and qualitative factors (e.g. competition, customer tastes) must be weighed to determine the best approach to achieving an organization’s long-term goals. In this job, you must be adept at identifying key variables and translating them into models and other forms of analysis to inform decision-making.

The group’s hotel interests are largely dependent on corporate, rather than private, bookings. This makes them vulnerable to any downturn in business sentiment; conversely, they gain from any upswing in the business cycle. In this context, US corporate investment is the indicator to watch. Many economists expect this to grow strongly in both 2010 and 2011 and this is likely to result in decent increases in Intercontinental’s RevPAR – revenue per average room. In the last recovery, RevPAR grew by over 6% in 2004 and by over 10% in 2005. With the recent downturn having been particularly savage, there is scope for larger rises this time around.

At present, Intercontinental shares trade at around a 45% discount to those of its competitor, Marriot (based on the companies’ price/earnings ratios). To some extent, this gap may be justified by Marriot’s faster growth in earnings per share, but it still seems too wide to us. So we reckon that there is room for a marked increase in Intercontinental’s share price.

There are a number of risks surrounding any investment in Intercontinental. As mentioned above, Intercontinental’s reliance on corporate bookings makes it vulnerable to movements in the business cycle. In addition, the international nature of Intercontinental’s business makes it vulnerable to currency movements, geo-political events or acts of terrorism. A few years ago, there was speculation about a consolidation in the hotel industry, and a possible takeover of Intercontinental by one of the major US hotel operators – such speculation could return in future. Remember, finally, that this is an investment which can go down as well as up in value, and that you may not get back the full amount invested.

This article represents the view held on 14-06-2010

Spain +385 (So bet $100 to win $385)
Brazil +400
England +565
Argentina +585
Germany +1100
Netherlands +1000
Italy +1000
France +1500
Portugal +2500

And for all of you that will be slaving non stop in some bank, this is the Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to make world cup predictions while pretending to be working. Simply write in the scores in the white boxes and the rest is taken care of.

World Cup Prediction Spreadsheet

In the first quarter of 2010, Goldman made money on each and every single trading day. That’s right, the firm did not record a loss of even a cent on even one day in the last quarter. That’s 63 days profitable out of 63 trading days. Goldman is now the market – or, more in line with modern market reality, Goldman is the house, it controls the casino, and always wins. Congratulations America: you now have far, far better odds in Las Vegas that you have making money with an E-Trade account.

Adding to the “Alice in Wonderland” insanity of this announcement, the firm made over $100 million daily on 35 different days. Of Goldman’s $9.7 billion in total Q1 revenue, 76% came from trading. So forget investment banking, forget underwriting, forget advisory: over three quarters of the firm’s value is based on being the house to the biggest and most corrupt casino in existence.