CVByrne

Yes, I meant there was no open risk. In all business there is risk. Banking is the same. You give a mortgage to a customer there is a risk they will not pay it back. But with the risk I'm talking about, spot deals, even liquid bond trading. The risks are very quantifiable and catastrophic losses can't sneak up on you. The only way they can be achieved in Capital Markets are if you do highly leveraged deals or do propriority trading in derivatives, like Synthetic CDO's or long short books in CDS's. There is no physical security in these. So bet's on theoretical things can be done, in theory infinitely.

There is zero risk of what? There is zero open risk. As in there is a beginning to the trade and end to the trade. Say a corporate customer rings up and wants 1mil dollars which they need to be paid to a supplier in 3 days time. What exchange rate can they get? The dealer looks at the current exchange rate and adds a tiny margin as a fee and the gives the rate to the customer. We are now locked into that rate with our client, the trader can do the deal there and then or can wait to do the deal later that day if he believes he can get a better rate. He uses his knowledge in this regard. But there are limits put on so if the rate goes against us to x amount the deal is struck and we book a loss on the transaction. So the point is there is no open risk beyond the close of business. So nothing can sneak up on the bank or the trader after they have gone home. The majority of the profits of the Capital Markets division are earned in this manner, through corporate clients.

Agree with you there. Really is amazing what has happened in the space of a few years. I only joined the bank in 2007 and have witnessed a lot.

Whilst that's the moral case, I'm assuming that the people who went to court and won did it on the basis of it being a contractual commitment from the bank. Apart from the opprobirum of the public, what is to stop other employees from pursuing their cases? An edict issued by a minister of state isn't going to affect the legal position, is it? Indeed, it would appear to be a slightly dangerous precendent to set - that a government can interfere, retrospectively, in contracts between legal entities. The trader who took the case, John Foy had a contractual bonus as a % of his earnings. He worked on the FX spot desk, so every deal he did was settled in real cash. So there is zero risk. Just his judgement on when to do customer deals. When he joined the bank he negotiated a contract which had a low basic salary and higher potential for commission on his performance. This was a contract he could get due to his desk being the spot desk, ie low risk management required. It's simply knowing when to get the best exchange rate when doing corporate foreign currency deals. Anyway, you can understand why he took the case. But when things like this become political and when media have sway over the government the law doesn't matter as much as popular opinion.

Thus, the bigger the incentive, the bigger the risks taken. The bigger the risks, the more possibility that things will go tits up. You don't make a moral case for gambling by saying that you win all the time. Oh I agree, excessive risk taking is what got us into this. But you can see how rather frustrating this whole situation is for my department, which is the risk department in AIB Capital Markets a division that has never made a loss and have to be fair to us, been excellent managers of risk. It's the correct level of risk management that is required. The bank has to take risks, every time a loan is given out it's a risk.

See the numbers here, all the money is top loaded. 11.1mil to 62 execs and 30mil to managers. = 41.1mil. Not only when you move further up does your wage increase but the % of your wage you got in a bonus increases. I can tell you, the economic crisis has really shown the culture of the management in the bank. It stinks. It's mildly satisfactory to see the deck of cards come down.

Oh I fully understand that, but it's not as simple as that. Nothing ever is. Think about a car sales man, he gets commission for every car he sells. Which means he will work hard to sell as many cars as possible as he'll earn more money. Same principle works with the traders. They get a extra money for earning more money for the bank. If there is no incentive then why take a risk. You have to remember that Capital Markets division has made €300mil for the past 3 years. Proper physical money, no property loans, no loans at all. FX deals, tradeable bonds etc.. Would the division have made that money if there were no bonuses? No it wouldn't, so that money would have to have come from the tax payer due to the bank being wreckless lending by another division It's hard for a non banking person to understand that the property lending bank and the capital makrets bank are entirely different entities. But they are. So people in Capital Markets loath the other division more than anyone else, that's the cancerous part that has ruined the hard work of another. But in reality, you can't be paying bonuses in this climate. Regardless of anything. I'm personally not peeved about this. The whole thing is and was out of my hands, whatever happens happens. But I've never been one to spend money, so not getting more of it really won't effect my life.

I work in that Division and was due to get that bonus. It's understandable that they were cancelled, I thought they had been until the traders took that court case. Bit harsh that ordinary workers on 25k and 30k working in the bank get villified and now have the bonus taken away. It should have been paid for people on low salaries, some of them needed that I'd say, especially with redundancies coming in a couple of months. Me though, it's just money. It'd have gone into a savings account like most of my money does. It'll be very interesting in work tomorrow. Could the traders walk out? I've no idea what is going to happen. Will be interesting day alright. I'll let you know how people take it. Me though, I will be in at the normal time and do my work.

It fixes it mykeyb, one of the first things I changed on my browser.

Watched Sky Blue / Wonderful Days, very good. Worth a look. Also saw The Town, which was ok.

That Tegra 2 platform was always going to be awesome.

If you are happy with the restriction then great, however I think its pretty poor. If I had downloaded a shedload of apps and games I would expect there to be issues but if I have download 10 apps before Copilot then thats about it and in a modern OS you would expect better. As you like analogies Android is a bit like build a sports car then only putting a 950cc engine in it - you can make it go faster but its bloody hard work. I have a Galaxy S, it has a shit load of memory so I've never experienced any thing like this. Your gripe is with HTC and their crappy amount of memory, not Android.

Mykeyb you need to find or your sales code by entering a *# code into the dialer. I only know the code for the galaxy s. Whatever that sales code is is what determines your updates. This code could be changed after the unlock. Also the Desire is more locked down than the SGS so don't know if this is editable.

Yeah but Swype is integrated into the SGS firmware so I can't use the betas which are miles better. XDA lads have found a way to get around that though. Can you edit the dictionary in the Dec beta?

Cheers dirk. I'll follow that so. Gonna try out Voodoo now, instead of OCLF. Also the Swype in 2.2 is worse than 2.1 which is worse than the March Swype beta which was awesomeness personified. I can't use swype unless they let me make the dictionary smaller. 2.2 has a good keyboard. So I'm gonna give swiftkey a try. My mate has been raving about it (he's an iphone convert so was always gonna stick with tap typing). Anyone tried it out before?

Also I'm thinking of doing a factory reset on my phone. I've had froyo for awhile now and want a clean start and go customise. Will I be able to get my paid apps back from the market ? Also App brain might be useful to keep track of the apps I had and if I want them back again. Any further tips. You've been flashing roms a lot dirk.

Yeah filesystem lag was defo a non runner with Google. I hope it's done away with by Samsung for Gingerbread. I found OCLF did the trick though. NCF was done just to innovate, get it out before Apple did and people started wanking over it because Steve Jobs would make people believe it was better than sliced bread. Like most of the "innovations" these days none a really that earth shattering.

Yes that app is called all share and comes installed on the sgs. You just need to select the folders on your pc that are shared with the sgs.

Yeah the battery life stat has to be wrong. But it is from google's own spec sheets on compare phones. Can't figure that one out. I also agree bluetooth 2.1 might be a better option for some. It'd help with bluetooth gamepad's anyway. The no sd card support is very frustrating, I use my phone as a portable media player and use the tv out quite a bit too. Going from 48gb to 16gb when essentially upgrading your phone is too much. Especially given the price of the thing. The fact you will have gingerbread and then honeycomb before everyone else is the only big plus for me. The NFC tech is pointless for people living in ireland. I'm still chuffed to bits that google has optimized gingerbread for the galaxy s core. The iNAND and NFC chip are the only differences. Should be a cinch to port vanilla gingerbread to the sgs.

In theory yes.

Hmm, I don't think there is any point in me getting a Nexus S. I would if it was better than the SGS in every way. But it isn't in many ways. It has no external sd card, only 16gb internal. I've a 32gb card in my sgs packed full of tv shows and movies. It's bigger and heavier than the galaxy s. It has worse battery life, talk/standby 6/428 to 13/750 hours. It has bluetooth 2.1 sgs has 3.0 It has no tv out like the sgs. It has no Swype It costs £550 I'm happy google had basically done all the work for samsung and optimized gingerbread for the hummingbird. I'm sure their opensourced drivers have been given to samsung which will speed up the gingerbread release for the Galaxy S. Also it seems getting a vanilla gingerbread rom ported from the Nexus S will be very easy. Basically it's excellent news for people who have Galaxy S'.

No point in me getting the Nexus S as it's too similar to the Galaxy S but it's such good news that they are so similar. I'd say Samsung would be daft not to release vanilla Gingerbread or at least leak the Nexus S rom to sammyfirmware. Consensus on XDA is that a port will be defo coming to Galaxy S given the hardware is identical bar the Near Field stuff. Android is going to utterly dominate this market.

Nexus s had the same core at the galaxy s. Great news for galaxy s owners should be a cinch to get a 2.3 rom soon.

Nexus s had the same core at the galaxy s. Great news for galaxy s owners should be a cinch to get a 2.3 rom soon.

Nexus s had the same core at the galaxy s. Great news for galaxy s owners should be a cinch to get a 2.3 rom soon.