For anyone starting or joining a startup you need to understand something important. Entrepreneurs, like all creative people, are pure petrol*.

Extracting, refining and transporting petrol is complex, costly, sensitive, time consuming to get right. Even once it’s ready to pump, petrol is delicate and dangerous. Throw it about, it’ll evaporate. Leave it in the canister too long, it’ll spoil. But light a match at the perfect moment, and BOOM you have a fireball.

The banks are too big to fail. Everyone says it and so it must be true. The last two decades have seen the rise and fall of the big bank concept. Take the ultimate global bank, the ‘Citi’ that never sleeps. It’s currently in 101 countries, has over 241,000 employees (down from around the 340,000 mark) and occupies over 10,000 properties. Could you imagine a government willing to take on the economic destruction by not bailing out a group of such significance? Well the US government couldn’t bring itself to either, with public money helping out Citi a number of times.

There’s a curious “truth” doing the rounds in the peer-to-peer sector. It goes something like this:

Institutional money has arrived in crowdfunding big time. This is a fantastic endorsement of this growing sector. The future will be more institutional money enabling more sector growth. This is brilliant, if bittersweet. It will enable peer-to-peer to become the premier way for companies and individuals to borrow, but retail investors will get squeezed out in the process.

With the return of the Conservatives to government many of their policies will see a ‘business as usual’ banner hoisted above them. Last year the Chancellor made a potentially game-changing commitment to include crowdfunding within the ISA wrapper. The crowdfunding industry has long asked for a separate ISA, one which is not treated as the same asset class as the renowned and respected Cash ISA, or even to the more complex Stocks and Shares ISA. It is obvious that P2P lending has its very own risk and reward profile, and consumers need to understand these nuances.

Financial IT speaks with Mike Schutt, Managing Director/Head of Trading SunGard’s Fox River Execution Solutions about the company’s flagship product designed by traders and for traders.

Ullink, a global provider of market leading electronic trading and connectivity solutions, today announced that Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE), one of India's leading institutional brokers and a division of Kotak Securities has chosen Ullink’s UL Bridge connectivity solution.

Misys, the leading financial software company, has launched an in-memory analytics engine, FusionBanking Insight, integrated with its next-generation core banking solution, FusionBanking Essence.

SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services for the global financial services industry, today announced that LIM AdvisorsLimited, a Hong Kong based fund manager, has signed a milestone agreement to utilize SimCorp Dimension for a full front, middle and back office platform.

Surecomp^®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporations, announced today that Isbank AG, the European arm of Turkey’s leading bank Türkiye Is Bankasi A.S., has licensed Surecomp’s state-of-the-art DOKA 5® trade finance system. A configurable bank back-office solution, DOKA 5 leverages Surecomp’s decades of experience providing proven trade finance systems to banks and corporations worldwide.

Partech Ventures today announced that it has co-led a new €10MM financing round in Kantox,  the pioneer in foreign exchange services for SMEs and mid-cap companies.

“With our 2^nd significant investment in 18 months, Partech Ventures reaffirms its full commitment to Kantox” explained Philippe Collombel, Managing Partner at Partech Ventures and Kantox board member.