Tag Archives: Barclays

morning-coffee

Company Confidential?

Still in app mode following yesterday’s post on Aviate and with Las Vegas’s CES still in full force, it’s interesting to hear that tech companies are pitching apps that provide untraceable message delivery. These are designed for corporate users that want a higher level of security than Snapchat offers. The latest offering is Confide, a text-based iOS app released this week by former AOL executive Jon Brod and Howard Lerman, chief executive officer of location-services company Yext.

Confide is aimed at professionals who want to speak openly about delicate personnel or legal matters without leaving a trail of evidence that exposes confidential information. Think about the times when someone sends a memo that says, ‘Confidential, do not forward,’ or when someone asks for your personal e-mail to go off the company’s network or when it’s something you’d rather talk about on the phone or face to face, but don’t have time – that’s where Confide comes in.

There is, however, still one potential problem. Companies face heavy regulatory pressure to preserve and not destroy business e-mails, financial records, and other documents. In business, there still needs to be some kind of audit trail and accountability. For instance, last month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Barclays $3.75 million for its decade-long failure to retain certain electronic records, e-mails, and instant messages. If employees are discussing critical information or creating financial records, they should most probably be retained.

Confide could also face a much higher barrier to entry if Snapchat were to market itself more aggressively to business users. As the app has just been launched it is as yet unclear whether business people will commit to using such a service, but Brod and Lerman point to the success of Facebook’s corporate ‘copycats’ such as LinkedIn. The founders remain convinced that it’s incredibly important, like in the offline world, to provide the option of impermanence online.

Is this clever app a success in the making? Drop us a line and we’ll ‘confide’ in you!’

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morning-coffee

Do Employers Take A Sufficient Stand On Mental Health?

It seems that cases of mental ill-health have been occurring more frequently, or at least more publicly lately. Sir Hector Sants, the former head of the UK financial regulator, has stepped down from a senior role at Barclays after announcing that he was taking leave due to “exhaustion and stress”. António Horta-Osório, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, took a leave of absence two years ago on doctors’ advice, returning in early 2012. Meanwhile, Carsten Schloter, chief executive of Swisscom, Switzerland’s biggest telecoms company, is presumed to have committed suicide in July, having talked publicly about the relentless demands of the job.

Events like these are very unpleasant for the individual affected and shocking and tragic for them and their friends, families and colleagues. They highlight how unprepared society is to deal with mental health and highlight the lack of understanding of this widespread family of diseases which is now among the world’s most prevalent illnesses. Is there a direct link between stress and mental illness? Apparently not since many people thrive on stress and almost all survive it, even though it can provoke an underlying predisposition to mental ill health. Indeed, mental illness is an illness, just like hypertension.

Many mentally unwell people refuse either to accept treatment or to discuss their illness for fear of impairing their careers. If chief executives make clear that they expect colleagues with such problems to come forward and that it will not harm their prospects and that their illness is like any other, it will help matters. Hence, this is why business leaders must take the lead to help make it acceptable in order to reduce the number of people who feel they must hide, freeing them to understand their illness and seek treatment. Employers should accept that business has a vital role in creating widespread acceptance of mental ill-health as a “normal”, as well as promoting healthier work ethics so that illness and even death, become much rarer events.

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Is Barclays Guilty Of Currency Trading Manipulation?

Barclays has added its name to a widening currency trading probe, which could become a scandal on a par with Libor manipulation. It has become the latest bank to admit it is facing an investigation into whether its staff were involved in attempts to manipulate global foreign exchange markets. The bank confirmed it was reviewing trading activity by its employees for several years, up to as recently as this August, as part of an international inquiry into alleged rigging of currency markets. The Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s market regulator, is currently one of several organisations currently in the early stages of an investigation into the potential rigging. Barclays admission came as the bank reported its third-quarter results, which showed its statutory pre-tax profits for the last three months had increased by nearly £700m quarter-on-quarter to £351m. A strong shot of morning coffee may be in order for the folk at Barclays!

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