Five years ago I wrote a thought piece called ‘Through the Looking Glass’ to provoke non-linear thinking and foster debate on the possible future direction of the financial services industry and market structures. (I later turned it into a short video called AmazonBay.) It was a retrospective told from the point of view of an observer in 2015. It was never meant to be taken literally – in particular with respect to (most of) the specific corporate mergers – rather I used these as a concise and dramatic way of highlighting the possible or even probable consequence of the deep secular currents that I felt would inevitably work to reshape the landscape.
(December 2015:) …The global securities and investment banking groups that dominated the market in the last century are now extinct. In their place we have an intelligent galaxy of new specialist advisory, investment management, algorithmic software and consulting firms networked with a universe of powerful transaction facilitation exchanges. Banks now exist only as giant regulated pools of capital.
Following the sweeping banking reforms proposed last week by President Obama, and the fact that we are now halfway to this hypothetical future, I thought it might be worth doing a quick mark-to-market of how my ideas have lined up with reality.
Oracle
stock exchange consolidation and emergence of new exchange venues (A-) pretty close both in outcomes and timing – the major stock exchanges have been merging a-go-go while at the same time new trading venues have proliferated, and exchange (or quasi-exchange) trading of new asset classes continues to develop strongly.
sports/outcome trading in US legitimized (B-) my narrative had this happening in February 2010, not there yet but Congressman Frank’s bill might open the doors later this year and the trend seems to be on the right track and will probably be signed into law by Obama (!); as an aside was way early on a Betfair IPO…
giant bank mergers followed by break-up of vertically integrated universal banks, with Goldman Sachs leading the way (A) we have seen the big get mostly even bigger (RBS/ABN, BoA/ML, Barclays/Lehman…and while JPMorgan didn’t buy MS, they did get Bear Stearns and WaMu); GS hasn’t yet broken itself into three as predicted but I’m still confident it will lead the way when/if industry structure changes, and more generally the trend of regulatory thinking across the globe is definitely a trailing wind for the kind of change I envisioned. The 2010-2012 timeframe for the re-organization of global banks is probably a bit early but plausibility has certainly gone up (from near zero) significantly since I wrote this.
more (and more) algorithmic / automated intermediation of markets (A-) this was obliquely referenced in my article but was really at the heart of the idea that this fictional ‘AmazonBay’ platform would end up dominating this aspect of markets; clearly the market is heading this way – in fact it may seem obvious now but most people did not fully understand this even as little as five years ago.
Amazon anything (B+) The jury is probably still out on this one, but in my view it is looking increasingly likely that Amazon.com will become a giant of the next economic paradigm; whether or not they use their vast intellectual and technological resources to participate more directly in the financial services arena is not yet clear, but I can tell you the only ‘big company’ job I would not hesitate for two minutes to accept if it were offered would be CEO or CSO of Amazon Financial Services (AFS) Jeff are you listening?
(Note: Remember I used real company names mainly to add vividness to the ideas underlying the narrative. The key concept I wanted to convey with this GS break-up vignette was that the vertically integrated model would decompose under the light of new technology and regulations into a (technology-centric) Sales & Trading component, a more focused, relationship driven Advisory component (cf. the emerging proliferation of pure advisory ’boutiques’) and independent, conflict-free Asset Management businesses (cf. the secular growth of hedge funds and Barclays sale of BGI, etc.))
(February 2009:) …Reacting to new competition, Goldman Sachs becomes the first major investment bank to break itself up. Securities and distribution are sold to Ebay Financial Markets, while the remaining activities are split into two new companies: GS Advisory Services and GS Capital management…
Charlatan
eBay anything (D) Despite the fact that the actual companies cited are more symbolic than literal, the choice of eBay to represent the cutting edge of online, data-driven, algorithmic marketplaces was simply awful. To the extent that it risks distracting the viewer from the key, underlying messages. It is now entirely implausible and so instead of bridging the cognitive gap, the inclusion of eBay simply extends it. Thank goodness this is somewhat mitigated by my inclusion of Amazon.com (see above) as the other new markets avatar but they come late to the narrative…
sports trading developing as an asset class (C+) this clearly hasn’t happened, although there are one or two small funds and firms offering managed accounts; and a vibrant ecosystem of professional traders and the associated software has emerged around the Betfair and other exchange platforms. In my defense, I picked sports as just a provocative and emotionally attractive example of the idea that – enabled by technology – a vast array of new tradable markets in goods but also outcomes, would emerge. Work in progress.
credit crunch and asset bubbles (D) although the overall purpose of the piece was to provoke thinking on the sustainability of existing business models in financial services in the face of radically shifting underlying technological, economic and demographic trends, I failed to include a thread touching on the possibility of catastrophic systemic discontinuities arising as a result of the prevailing market structure and business models. It’s a significant ommission, especially as at the time of writing this I was in the process of exiting my former responsibilities as a senior executive in the credit business due in part to my increasing discomfort with the sustainability and prudence of the risk pricing in that market.
All in all, I would give myself a mid-term grade of B+/A- with room both to improve and to slip back. Mostly on the right track, especially with respect to big themes but perhaps a bit optimistic in terms of some of the timelines. What do you think? Better? Worse? To be fair, the correct measuring stick is not so much whether or not I was right or wrong, even in terms of ‘macro’ predictions but whether or not this article and video helped catalyze serious discussion, debate and thought about the potential for disruptive and non-linear change in the financial services industry. Alas I have no idea how one could even attempt to measure that, but any thoughts or anecdotes you might have with respect to this would of course be appreciated.
Every executive committee member of a large bank, exchange or insurance company should read Kirk Wylie’s latest post to understand why their cultures are broken and why they so regularly find their organisations blithely running off the edge of a cliff, comfortable in the knowledge that, “well, hey at least we’re all doing it so it must be ok” and safe in the knowledge that their is a big taxpayer airbag (or trampoline?) at the bottom protecting them from any nasty consequences. Of course they are unlikely to – except in the unlikely event that it gets published in one of the traditional echo chamber publications like the FT or the WSJ.*
I’ll resist the temptation to copy/paste the whole post here but please go read it as this excerpt doesn’t give it justice:
Independent, entrepreneurial techies can actually make the biggest impact in the organizations that fight against them the most: they’re the ones that need them the most. Use them as agents for change, challenging assumptions, challenging entrenched attitudes, challenging technical group-think. Otherwise, your worst employees (the ones who can’t really get a better job elsewhere) win, and you as an organization fail.
Kirk is speaking of technologists, but the same thing applies across the organization. But big organizations kill entrepreneurship, actually it’s in their DNA. It’s not news, tall poppies and all that. As I was leaving 16 years of working – mostly happily – in big organizations I spent a lot of time thinking about why this was (and also why I hadn’t noticed it earlier in my career.) The answer to the second question was really because of luck. For 90% of my investment banking career I had the good fortune to be right in the heart of building three new and transformational markets: first the Ecu/Euro market, then the European credit markets and finally the move to ‘electronic’ capital markets. Throughout this part of my career, innovation, entrepreneuralism and independence actually helped me succeed because there was no pre-existing status quo to upset. This only became apparent to me in hindsight.
The answer to the first question is now obvious to me, but it wasn’t always so and really only revealed itself when I left and was able to step back and look at the machine from the outside. The expression ‘well-oiled’ machine says it all. This is the ultimate compliment used to describe a successfully managed organization. So where does non-linear innovation, disruption, questioning fit in a well-oiled machine? It doesn’t. In fact the more ‘well-oiled’ the machine, the less tolerant it is of exceptions. (Which also explains why I operated happily for so long at DrKW!) Switching metaphors, entrepreneurship is seen as a virus in these companies and they produce potent ‘corporate antibodies’ to seek out and subdue any such viral outbreak and they do everything (pace Kirk) to innoculate themselves against them in the first place.
But what is a CEO to do? The ‘well-oiled’ bit is equally important. I am sympathetic to this. (I mean if I was in charge I wouldn’t want too many of me’s running around, that would be chaos.) It’s not an easy question to answer and is made even harder (especially if you are running a public company) by the fact that the visible benefits of the entrepreneurial genes are only realized over time – I’d guess at least 4-5 years at a minimum and sometimes it might take as long as a full business cycle. And yet the average leadership tenure in these organizations is at best at the short end of that, and the compensation and stock market cycles are much shorter. I’ll be frank and say up front, I don’t have an answer but I’ve got a couple ideas I think are worth trying.
The first is to set – from the top – a deliberate human resource policy of seeking to “doping” the organization with a limited and controlled number of people like Kirk. (Doping is the process of adding controlled impurities to a material – for instance a semiconductor, or metallic alloy – to improve it’s useful properties.) This needs to be managed very deliberately, like a program – put a senior HR person in charge of this and manage it: these people will likely have a higher turnover, complain more often, get into trouble, want to change projects and/or departments and so need their own career track. I’m not sure what the correct ratio is, but I would guess it’s on the order of 1-2% of total staff, not necessarily evenly distributed throughout the company. (I knew my Materials Science degree would come in handy one day!)
The second is to create – and then protect institutionally, not personally – a specific department dedicated to exploring ‘white space’. When I say protect institutionally, I mean frame it like a trust so it cannot be undone or hacked by successive waves of management and is insulated from the quarter on quarter, year on year vagaries of the economy and/or the companies results. If you don’t do this, you will inevitably fall victim to the problems Azeem enumerates in his great post on why corporate venture capital (almost always) doesn’t work. Before all the serious, “pragmatic” people out there roll your eyes all at once (if indeed any such types would consider wasting time reading a blog) this doesn’t and shouldn’t need to be a big ask. Again probably on the order of 1-2% (even less for the biggest companies), of resources. The best example in practice I can think of is Xerox PARC, although the irony there is that Xerox didn’t really figure out how to plug PARC’s non-linear thinking and brilliant innovation back into the company (or at least not very well.) But perhaps that is not a bad thing (in proving my point) because I would posit that all other things being equal, Xerox’s share price has been higher (than it otherwise would have been) because they owned this asset. This cheap, deep out-of-the-money call option on the future. As far I as can tell, this is also what BT is trying to do with BT Design led by my friend JP and it is heartening to see that – at least so far – he is being allowed to continue to pursue this vision despite (and hopefully even because of?) the very poor results of the past couple years. I don’t know of any truly analogous initiatives in big finance.
And indeed that is (one of the reasons) we decided to set up Nauiokas Park. Clearly we’re not the whole solution, but we think we can play a key role for big financial institutions: a way to have (some of) their cake and eat it too: by entrusting a relatively small amount of financial capital to us, we think we can create just such a verdant ‘garden of innovation’, allowing them to harvest the fruits of some of the most dynamic entrepreneurs active in their industry, while protecting and nuturing them, away from the noxious antibodies of the corporate organism. Indeed, taking a page out of John Seely Brown, I guess you could describe our mission as seeking to create a vibrant knowledge ecology for finance and markets, and help our stakeholders profit from it:
There’s a fundamental change from finding ways to innovate inside a corporation to leveraging the knowledge ecologies of many little companies in places like Silicon Valley. You find that the shift turns much of the classical R&D into A&D – that is, acquisition and development. Larger companies can buy the research they need and instantly acquire a diverse portfolio of research groups.
I’ll be honest though, it’s not an easy sell. Even for the corporate leaders who ‘get it’ the reflex instinct is to think (sometimes aloud) “makes sense, but we can do that ourselves”. Well, you can’t prove a negative, but we’ve spent a long time inside these same big financial institutions, and our many years of experience led us to conclude that it is bloody hard to do (for all the reasons above and more.) On the bright side, being challenged makes you think harder and forces you to refine and adapt your ideas, ultimately making them better. Hearts and minds. Hearts and minds. Wish us luck.
* Just to be clear, I have nothing against the FT or the WSJ per se, I read them regularly (well WSJ not so much) and think they are solid publications. I’m not suggesting they aren’t important sources of information and opinion – you’d be stupid not to read them if you are in finance – just that, and this is the wonderful thing about the world in 2009 – I think you need to read much more widely and in particular embrace at least a diversity of viewpoints, if not views.
The debate du jour around the world’s capitals and financial centers is of course “How do we save the banking system?” Good banks. Bad banks. Private banks. State banks. Capital injections. Credit insurance. Etcetera. But in this Dr. Seuss world of solutions, and despite thousands upon thousands of articles, blog posts and editorials, I have been very surprised to see that one crucial element seems to be missing from all the solutions being discussed: innovation and entrepreneurialism.
Governments should invest (at least) a small amount of the billions and billions they are ploughing into the financial system into new banks. That’s right – start-ups. But not carbon copies of the banks we have today. 21st century banks. Banks that aren’t built on foundations of obsolete business models and technologies. Banks that are “digital natives”. Banks that by design answer the question: “If you had a blank sheet of paper, how would you build a platform and and organization to provide banking services in today’s (and tomorrow’s) world?” Banks that not only understand the importance of Moore’s (and Kryder’s) and Metcalfe’s and Linus’ and Amara’s laws but also their ramifications for a business that is intrinsically and structurally about managing digital information flows in a connected society and economy. Banks without (literally and psychologically) the corrosive burden of legacy costs and structures. Banks who apply Coase’s theories in the context of transacting in a networked world. Banks who embrace the lessons of Dunbar and Kahneman and Thaler (and Sunstein) when designing their management and compensation policies. Banks that strive to live up to Einstein’s suggestion that “things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler” and have an instinctive bias against complexity and a copy of Maeda‘s The Laws of Simplicity in the Board room. Banks that recognize that when you boil it all down, the product they are ultimately selling is trust.
(adapted from Wikipedia) A bank is a financial institution whose primary activity is to act as a payment agent for customers and to borrow and lend money. It is an institution for receiving, keeping, and lending [and investing] money.
Obviously in order to build such a bank you need a team of leaders who not only understand banking and finance but understand intuitively the social and technological landscape of the 21st century. Bankers who refuse to trivialize novel tools and modes of communication and interaction simply because they are unfamiliar. Bankers who are as comfortable on Facebook or Twitter as they are on a trading floor or in a branch. Bankers who collect and collate their daily information via RSS readers and wikis and blogs and not just from the FT or CNBC or Bloomberg. Bankers who have accepted that the value they can create no longer comes from arbitraging information scarcity and building black boxes that hide complexity but from embracing abundance and building tools to help people navigate this complexity as partners. Bankers who would be equally comfortable discussing the future of finance with the founders of Google as they would be with the governor of a Central Bank. Bankers who are passionate yet sober. Bankers who are focused on the future and on providing a service that doesn’t rely on coercion or inertia or lack of alternatives to keep their customers satisfied. Bankers who realize what a tremendous opportunity exists to start afresh and be part of creating a new paradigm in financial services.
These individuals exist. Many are readers of this blog. I am one of them. So is Amy. We are connected to many more via our networks. I suspect that many of them would jump at the chance to participate in a venture (or ventures) like this. And not just because the financial opportunity cost of doing so has plummeted (although that clearly helps, everyone has bills to pay…) but because it’s exciting. Because it would be challenging. Because it’s the right thing to do.
So why not just do it? Why the government? Why a billion dollars? Because building a bank by bootstrapping from nothing is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible. There are many reasons, importantly:
The fundamental nature of the business – selling trust-based products and services in a highly regulated environment – means that the minimum level of operating costs and capital required to be credible is substantial.
Perceptions are important, especially in these turbulent economic times; no matter how abusive the relationship (with their existing bankers), people and companies are going to be initially very cautious about giving their custom to a new bank, especially one that is obviously not too big to fail (indeed the implicit endorsement of the government in this context is probably even more important than the capital itself.)
Much can be achieved within the existing legal and regulatory framework, but many of the most interesting opportunities rely on this “institutional framework” evolving to “catch up” to the technological and economic reality; having the government as a partner would facilitate the dialog and help to counter the inevitable resistance from incumbents who have a vested interest in maintaining the (old) environment to which they have adapted.
Because as a taxpayer if I am forced to invest in the old (to mitigate catastrophic systemic risk), I want to also invest at least a part of my money in the future (to help build and profit from the reinvention of banking): remove the cancer yes, but start working on the cure.
As for the billion dollars, this was just a nice round back-of-the-envelope (somewhat informed) guess (plus it fit with the song!); this would be sufficient equity to build an operation with credibility and critical mass, and would support a sufficiently large but conservatively leveraged asset base to produce enough operating income to sustain growth and profitability (and pay back the government in full over a 5-15 year horizon without jeopardizing the business.) The right (minimum) amount needed could well be less, is unlikely to be more and would not need to come 100% from government coffers – indeed private co-investment would be desirable – and further the bulk of the capital would likely be called over a period of 1-3 years as the balance sheet is built up.
I’m deadly serious but to be frank, I’m not sure where to go with this. Although I have a pretty interesting and diverse network that includes a number of even better connected people, I don’t think I’d have much success cold calling Mr. Brown or Mr. Darling and getting a chance to pitch this over a latte at the local Costa… Even less Mr. Obama or Mr. Geithner… But perhaps if nothing else, I can catalyze the conversation and bring this option – earmarking at least a small portion of the various btrillions of rescue funds to seeding a new generation of 21st century banks – to the attention of the politicians and the public.
I know there is a risk that this proposal sounds like just one more in a never ending line of petitioners going to the government for a handout. I hope that (at least, especially regular) readers will not doubt my integrity when I assure you that this is not my intent, and I genuinely believe that this is an idea worthy of serious consideration. And most importantly that – in this context - the government’s money is actually more valuable than anyone else’s. To get started. Essentially I’m suggesting the government(s) have a unique competitive advantage that makes them the ideal incubators for a new generation of banks (and that they would realize excess financial returns by exercising this advantage.)
You would think that the current problems facing mega-financial institutions (with Citigroup being the obvious poster child, but to be fair by no means the only example) that the CEO’s and Boards of large banks would think twice before thinking about pursuing large ‘industry-consolidating’ acquisitions. Don’t get me wrong, I can see how this current downturn could be seen as a seductive opportunity for anyone with a strong(er) balance sheet – not only are targets potentially cheap (at least by historical standards – setting aside concerns about visibility of future earnings) but they are possibly available which isn’t always the case (irrespective of price.) Furthermore, given the current labor market environment, the potential to actually realize efficiencies by consolidating and downsizing must indeed seem tantalizing to experienced industry leaders. And yet…
…and yet, at the risk of oversimplifying, it all just seems to underline a lack of creative strategic thinking at the top. Is the strong buying the weak, the big buying the less big, really the best or the only long term strategic choice faced by global financial services giants? Isn’t there a viable plan B? or C? At times like these, one can be forgiven for asking the question (from Here is the City news):
One upshot of the credit crunch is that some of the smaller or troubled banks look vulnerable to takeover. Only last week Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis said that he thought it will be more difficult for stand alone investment banks (like Goldman, Lehman, Merrill and Morgan Stanley) to survive, and that they may be swallowed up by commercial banking rivals with bigger balance sheets, better capital-structures and deeper pockets. Well, it didn’t take long for the rumour mill to kick into life.
The Daily Telegraph has come out Tuesday and reported that Barclays President Bob Diamond is trying to twist his board’s arm to make a bold bid for an investment bank. And, according to the newspaper, top of his wish-list is Lehman Brothers and under-fire UBS.
As the newspaper points out, Lehman would bolster investment banking arm Barclays Capital‘s presence in the US (something Diamond is keen to do), but there is significant overlaps in terms of jobs in fixed income and huge job losses are likely in the event that a deal is done. Over at UBS, of course, a large proportion of fixed income staff have been (or will be culled), so Diamond and the BarCap team won’t need to do as much axe wielding. And UBS’s equities, wealth management and private banking businesses would make a deal for the Swiss bank highly attractive.
Rumours are also swirling that Ken Lewis himself, despite his much-regretted comments last year about having about as much ‘fun’ as he could stand in investment banking, might be mulling over a run at Merrill Lynch. Although busy putting to bed the Countrywide deal at present, the smart money says that once that is sorted, Lewis might pounce (he is said to have long-coveted Merrill’s brokerage network).
I’m sure there are some good ‘consolidation’ deals out there to be had in the next 12-18 months, but I would further suggest that they will be the exceptions that prove the rule. The biggest risk in my opinion, will be when CEOs and Boards think like traders and not business leaders when considering these deals. In the majority of cases, they would be better off buying out-of-the money calls on firms they think are cheap and (if they are right) reaping the financial rewards of a good trade, rather than buying one firm lock-stock-and-barrel and having to valiantly try to manage through the (probably non-linear) increase in corporate complexity that this would engender.
I’ve been thinking about how to point you in the direction of a fantastic post by Going Private and despairing of just putting up a link saying ‘Read this’, or alternatively lamely regurgitating an executive summary, I am pleased to connect the dots in the context of the question posed above. Going Private blames the strategic ineptness of many businesses on Michael Porter and his Five Circles of Hell:
I blame Michael Eugene Porter. Not that Porter is a dipstick, (well not only that) but because the majority of his modern adherents certainly are.
The eager and almost rabid application of Porter’s “Five Forces” (Supplier Power, Customer Power, Threat of New Entrants, Threat of Substitute Products, Industry Rivalry) to technology products and services has bred an entire generation of MBAs in marketing positions dedicated to developing and maintaining closed systems and closed hardware platforms. This is particularly egregious in the case of business models that are effectively based on distribution channels. In conventional analysis there is nothing wrong with making your living on distribution channels. Remember, that in 1979, when Porter developed the Five Forces framework, distribution channels were highly expensive to create and maintain and, owing to these costs, constructing them effectively presented a significant barrier to entry. Your product didn’t even have to be particularly good, because the threat of substitutes was reduced via the difficulty and expense of the competition actually getting those substitutes (however good they might be) to your customers. Suppliers, if they wanted access to your customer base as a proxy to sell their raw materials, had to go through you. New entrants had to build an entirely new distribution channel. Customers were stuck. You owned the market. But you had to guard this distribution channel carefully. And you had to make sure you hadn’t forgotten something simple and critical. That’s not part of a conventional Porter analysis. But why would it be? Conventional distribution channels are quite physical, antique and boring.
In this post, Going Private makes the point by looking at a variety of businesses such as entertainment (videos, music), telecommunications and consumer electronics: “…particularly egregious in the case of business models that are effectively based on distribution channels.” (emphasis added) Now I would posit that this describes remarkably well much of the business of modern financial services as well. (Indeed some readers may recall my penchant for comparing the business models and the impact of technological changes thereon of the telecommunications industry and financial services…) (Mixing metaphors liberally…) bolting unreconstructed, 20th century, distribution platforms together ad infinitum, might get you a more efficient horse-and-buggy, but I sincerely doubt it will get you a car.
Admittedly this line of thinking is somewhat self-serving given that my business is predicated on helping large financial institutions develop a ‘Plan B’ and to helping them embrace new business ideas and approaches that are adapted to the new techno-economic paradigm. I am sympathetic however (see my previous post) to the institutional reality that it is often easier for a Chief Executive and his team to convince the Board to spend $10 billion on a ‘linear’ acquisition than it is to convince them to spend $10 million on an unproven ‘non-linear’ venture. We think we’ve found a way to help mitigate this behavioral paradox and plan to spend the next few years trying.
If we don’t succeed, I fear the future giants of banking will need a new mascot…
“Ronald Coase, the economist, famously observed that private companies are different, because they are not the only place to do business. An alternative to costly and complex banks is an atomised market, where individuals and institutions do business without a large financial intermediary. Banks may merge to survive this inevitable transition; but in the long run many of their functions will disappear…the core functions of any Wall Street Bank cannot remain inside the same complex and costly shell forever.” - Frank Partnoy, FT, April 5th, 2005
Last spring I wrote a fictional article titled “Through the Looking Glass”, with the goal of provoking reflection on the future of the investment banking and securities intermediation businesses. (The article was published in Euroweek.) But to be candid I was surprised and a bit disappointed at the lack of reaction or debate that the article engendered. Perhaps it was because it was published in specialist journal? or perhaps because it was perceived by those in the industry (99+% of the readers of Euroweek I would imagine) as too far-fetched as to merit any serious discussion? While it is obvious that the various combinations and the exact timeline are extremely unlikely to play out in the way I imagine in the article, the general premise that I sought to present through this conceit is entirely plausible and worthy of further discussion and debate in my opinion. So in the hope of reaching a wider audience through a more engaging and friendly medium, the article has been adapted into a short film.
Enjoy and if you think I am crazy, I’ll hope it is the right kind of crazy!
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and despite thousands upon thousands of articles, blog posts and editorials, I have been very surprised to see that one crucial element seems to be missing from all the solutions being discussed: innovation and entrepreneurialism. 
in the Board room. Banks that recognize that when you boil it all down, the product they are ultimately selling is trust.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=fa42bf9d-8ac6-4c1b-9352-1646d9d5134a)
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