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san ten ichi-ichi   Hong Kong – March 2011   At 1.50pm on Friday 11th March 2011 I was on the Hong Kong trading floor, lunch had just finished and my thoughts were already turning towards beers after work and the coming weekend.   Suddenly there was a commotion, as urgent messages started coming through on the squawk boxes and telephones. The Tokyo office was violently shaking in an earthquake. Whilst tremors were not unusual this one was sufficiently alarming for our Japan b

Pyramids I arrived in New York this May to the news that it was sinking into the sea[i]. Apparently the skyscrapers and other more prosaic buildings weigh the equivalent of 140 million elephants and this is pushing the Big Apple into the sauce at a rate of 1 to 2 mm a year[ii].   By the calculations provided to me by Microsoft Bing that is equal to the mass of 11.6 billion humans, being 1.4 times the current population of the world. So presumably if everybody went to live in

(Suppositions on the Sounds of Silence, Silvergate, Silicon Valley, Signature, and the Suisse[i])   “Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again   Because a vision softly creeping, Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping   And the vision that was planted in my brain   Still remains - within the sound of silence”[ii] [iii]   Stop what you are doing now, turn off Simon & Garfunkel on the radio and listen carefully to the ambient sound. Can you hear it?   Just b

I recently visited the Netherlands. A double Dutch pleasure in both being able to sit in an Amsterdam Café with oliebollen[i] or appeltaart, and because it is at the leading edge of applied behavioural science in Banking. Neither of these seems to rank highly in the Tripadvisor Top 10, nor on the itineraries of the 18 million annual visitors. They don’t know what they are missing.   As I walked out from my hotel on the first morning and narrowly missed being run over by a car

I have an (other) admission to make. My tendency to misbehaviour is now recorded on a Global Regulator’s website. That should be making me nervous, albeit I am not alone as a Banker whose waywardness has been well documented by the authorities. If it’s any consolation I did self-report.   As noted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York[i], when I go and watch my favourite rugby team I am mild mannered and sit amongst supporters from both sides. When we score the celebration

In the BC era (Before Covid) my fun daily commute involved a drive to the local station, followed by a train and tube journey into London, during which I would dial-in to pay the parking charges and register my car. Occasionally on the return train journey I would realise I had forgotten to pay and approach the car park with sweaty palms and trepidation. Then, with a sense of relief, I would see that no penalty notice was stuck to my windscreen and drive home, conveniently ov