The Hard Truth

I stand for the health and vitality of community banks and have watched for too long as the core and IT vendor oligopoly enjoyed by Fiserv, Fidelity, Jack Henry and the likes have gone unchecked, putting the entire community banking industry at great risk. Unable to develop and deploy the same affordable, cutting-edge, customer-facing services as those produced by larger national banks, community financial institutions have been left at the mercy of their core and IT providers.

So, What Can We Do?

Morningstar, Inc, a provider of independent investment research, published its annual study of investor returns, which measure how the average investor fared in a fund. Morningstar Investor Return is a dollar-weighted return that incorporates the effect of cash inflows and outflows from purchases and sales as well as the increase in a fund's assets.

2015 marked a new record for the number of mergers and acquisitions reported. According to Dealogic more than 38,000 were launched during the year. However, many of these, in reality, did not succeed. Certain large transnational mergers were undermined by the activism of the Obama Administration. Pfizer, which was due to merge with Allergan for $160 billion, has indefinitely postponed this operation, for example.

Crestone, which was established by client advisers, senior management and employees of UBS Wealth Management Australia Ltd, has opened its doors this week with the newly implemented Avaloq Banking Suite.

Hoist Finance AB acquired a well-diversified portfolio of non-performing banking claims originated by four regional Spanish banks. The portfolio is made up of approximately 115,000 loans, of which 86,000 are consumer unsecured loans and 29,000 are loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (“SME loans”).

The total investment amounts to just over EUR 22 million. The Estimated Remaining Collections ("ERC") amounts to approximately EUR 48 million over 120 months.

-  Corvil, the leading analytics company for financial markets, today announced that Exane BNP Paribas, a European broker dealer, is using the Corvil platform to assure the strength and performance of its electronic trading businesses and to support compliance wi

Profile Software, an international financial solutions provider, announced today the release of its enhanced FMS.next Core Banking platform that incorporates a wealth of new functionality for Collections, Debt Management, Loan Origination and Management as well as Alternative finance for Digital Banks.

Misys has been recognised for its work with Habib Bank Limited (HBL) in the cash management and trade finance category of the 2016 Celent Model Bank program. The accolade celebrates the bank’s technology transformation which has unified cash management, trade services and supply chain finance onto a single, integrated digital platform.

The implications of a potential BREXIT for non-EU hedge fund managers are hard to fathom. At present, public opinion polls appear to be neck and neck although fund managers seem confident BREXIT is unlikely to occur. A survey by Aviva Investors in February 2016 found 20% of equity fund managers and not a single bond fund manager thought BREXIT would happen. Whether this is misplaced optimism will be revealed on 23rd June but hedge funds globally should be cognisant of some of the potential issues BREXIT could bring.