Standard Chartered To Axe 1,000 Senior Bankers

[Sancho Panza]

Sky News 9/10/15

'London-headquartered bank, Standard Chartered, is to cut up to 1,000 jobs among its most senior staff.

The move - aimed at reducing costs - was revealed in a memo to StanChart workers by new chief executive, Bill Winters.

The bank, which is listed in London but focuses its activities in Asia, has been damaged by the economic slowdown that has affected key emerging markets, bad loans and regulatory action in the United States.

Mr Winters, who took over from Peter Sands in June following mounting anger over the bank's performance among shareholders, has been working on a plan to restore profitability and his action to date has included slashing its dividend by half.

He was quoted by Reuters as saying to staff: "Our situation requires decisive and immediate action.

"Each member of the management team has a mission to drive through improvements in our returns and part of this will be further streamlining of our organisation, eliminating management layers and duplication of roles."

Standard Chartered verified the memo and told Sky News: ""We said previously there would be further personnel changes to come, as we simplify our organisational structure."

Its shares, which have lost more than 40% of their value since the start of 2014, were up more than 3% during Friday trading.'

[Sancho Panza]

my heart bleeds......

You're all charity Nickos.

Who needs share buybacks to drive share prices 3% higher? If this trend catches on............

[200p]

They have to slash costs fast, there will be no quick turn around in the Chinese Markets.

[Roman Roady]

Open the golden parachutes!

[wonderpup]

Then there's this;

Robo advisors: The next big thing in investing;

One of the biggest shakeups in the investment world is the introduction of "robo advisors." These are automated investment services that manage your stocks and bonds for you.

It's like "set it and forget it" for your portfolio. The computer program automatically adjusts your investments and even tries to minimize your tax bill.

"Robo-advisory services will become mainstream over the next three to five years," consulting firm A.T. Kearney concluded in a report published this week.

By 2020, robo advisors will manage about $2 trillion in the U.S., the report predicted. To put that another way, A.T. Kearney believes robo advisors will control 5.6% of Americans' investment assets by 2020, up from just 0.5% today.

While robo advisors "sound fancy," they are basically just a "one-size-fits-all solution," Jeffrey Gundlach, the billionaire CEO of DoubleLine Capital, told a crowd at the Milken Global Conference in April.

His comments touch on a common critique that this passive approach to investing may not work for older investors with complex financial needs.

Yet Nash said such criticism fails to recognize the level of personalization provided by robo advisors.

For example, most robo advisors now deploy tax-loss harvesting tools. This technique is aimed at cutting your tax bill by selling securities at a loss to offset future capital gains taxes. Basically, it softens the blow of a losing stock while minimizing the tax hit on a winning stock.

Wealthfront says it is the only robo adviser to provide tax-optimized direct indexing for customers with over $100,000. Instead of buying a single ETF, the platform will purchase up to 1,001 individual securities in an effort to create more tax-loss harvesting opportunities.

"For humans this is a very boring thing to do. But computers don't get bored. They just run the numbers and do it everyday," said Nash.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/18/investing/robo-advisor-millennials-wealthfront/

[200p]

Hmm. Robot investing will initially be very popular IF it can return more than a fund manager. But as time goes on, more and more people will use robots, and it will become a zero sum game....the return will near 0% following the central bank rate, in a stagnant economy! (Probably)

There are bots on youtube that have their own channel. Yes, a robot that uploads videos by reading the internet, creating a video on a topic, reading out information with a robotic voice, with pictures taken from google. Some have over 10,000 videos, which have been uploaded in a short time, BUT they don't have many subscribers because they don't capture the imagination of viewers. People subscribe if there is a friendly voice or face that they can relate to --> See PewDiePie with 40m subscribers.

A banker will keep his job because he/she can SELL products (capture your imagination) so the punters can dream about super returns.

Edited October 9, 2015 by 200p

[200p]

If anyone is interested in black box trading, EMG, or Man group use a black box for it's long only funds --> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/11770565/Man-Groups-black-box-fund-drives-better-profits.html

Over a long term chart, EMG appears to be a good barometer for the economy. It's share price sold off as early as April of this year.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

violin picture anyone

[Kiwi Toast]

One investors loss is always another's gain. The aggregate returns of all investors are equal to the market portfolio. This is the sense in which trading is a zero-sum game, but there are no reasons for returns to be zero. I think it's unlikely robots will do better than trackers. If they are better than active fund managers it is probably because they don't charge the same fees. Otherwise presumably fund managers would start using the robots (they'd pay a lot for the privilege if necessary).

[wonderpup]

Hmm. Robot investing will initially be very popular IF it can return more than a fund manager. But as time goes on, more and more people will use robots, and it will become a zero sum game....the return will near 0% following the central bank rate, in a stagnant economy! (Probably)

There are bots on youtube that have their own channel. Yes, a robot that uploads videos by reading the internet, creating a video on a topic, reading out information with a robotic voice, with pictures taken from google. Some have over 10,000 videos, which have been uploaded in a short time, BUT they don't have many subscribers because they don't capture the imagination of viewers. People subscribe if there is a friendly voice or face that they can relate to --> See PewDiePie with 40m subscribers.

A banker will keep his job because he/she can SELL products (capture your imagination) so the punters can dream about super returns.

I'm not so sure- there's this odd quirk of human nature that we tend to trust machines more than human beings. Given the choice between a human and a black box algorithm I think a surprising number of people would choose the black box- perhaps in part because it is opaque and thus may be in imagination endowed with all manner of mysterious powers.

If the secret of success in this arena is the ability to imply a secret insight into the future beyond that of mortal men then what better oracle could one ask for than a superhuman machine that never sleeps and never grows weary of it's mission to maximize your returns.