Let's grab this golden chance - David McWilliams - is FF cunning enough?

Yixian

Also Dublin has about 2 billion times more diversity than Zurich or Dubai, both homologous bankscapes.

London is 70% white British. Dublin is 80% white Irish. There's plenty of diversity these days dude..

MikeC101

TheCandystripes wrote: »

moving to paris to anywhere would be a let down

Maybe if you've never lived in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok....and so on...

Actually I knew a trader in Bangkok working from home there, though his office was in Hong Kong. He'd work long hours in his apartment and fly back to Hong Kong for a few days every month. For certain trades you're really not pinned to a location once you've a good internet connection, and an airport within a reasonable drive.

From personal experience there would be an awful lot of cities I'd prefer to live in ahead of Paris.

Yixian

MikeC101 wrote: »

Maybe if you've never lived in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok....and so on...

From personal experience there would be an awful lot of cities I'd prefer to live in ahead of Paris.

Take Marseilles for example :P

TheCandystripes

Yixian wrote: »

These people go wherever the money is, frankly. If anything they'd be particularly suited to Ireland, what with the golf, yachting and hunting etc. and plenty of expensive trendy bars and few michelin stars in Dublin.

I have family in Marseilles and know France fairly well, Paris is obviously crammed with culture but you have to look at the drawbacks to those kinds of cities where Dublin can show it's advantages. Paris has a very high crime rate, not a lot of space and is pretty much fully developed. Dublin is growing, quickly, and by 2016 will have been redeveloped on a scale larger than almost any other European city in modern times. It's crime rate is low and there's tons of room to build.

You've got a Dublin Metro, Spencer Dock and Point Village opening by 2016, You've got the redevelopment of Philsborough, North Wall, Heuston, Grand Canal Quay etc. all developments you're never going to see in London or Paris, it's all been done. In Dublin you have the chance to see a small city become a large one - not many people get that chance.

I'd stick around if I was you.

This is a nice post. I like your positivity. I don't think a city needs to be like Paris or London to be good, maby Dublin can get even better. It has potential. Let's see anyway.

nesf

TGPS wrote: »

What's the world coming to when you find yourself agreeing with David McWilliams - paddywhackery's response to Tim Harford......

Tim Harford used to lecture in UCC, so we can partially claim him.

Yixian

TheCandystripes wrote: »

This is a nice post. I like your positivity. I don't think a city needs to be like Paris or London to be good, maby Dublin can get even better. It has potential. Let's see anyway.

Here's some stuff you might wanna take a look at:

Dublin Metro

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055649478

Grand Canal Square

http://www.grandcanalsquare.ie/

which includes the new Grand Canal Theatre (recently completed)



Spencer Dock

http://www.spencerdock.ie/

Point Village

http://www.pointvillage.ie/

And the Framework Development Plans

http://www.dublincity.ie/Planning/OtherDevelopmentPlans/FrameworkDevelopmentPlans/pages/frameworkdevelopmentplans.aspx

Which include for example, a restoration of Ivaegh Market to create a market district a la Covent Garden



^ Currently in disrepair

Then there's things like the new national opera company that's just been announced will be formed next year and based in Dublin, possibly with it's own new opera house?

And don't worry about the recession, these are all going ahead. This is only about a third of all that's going on too.

Dirk Gently

Greece announces 90% tax on senior bank bonuses .............

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8411749.stm

If only every country followed their lead.

woodseb

clown bag wrote: »

Greece announces 90% tax on senior bank bonuses .............

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8411749.stm

If only every country followed their lead.

well it'll make the government popular, appease the left but do bugger all to help Greece's public deficit.....

Dirk Gently

woodseb wrote: »

but do bugger all to help Greece's public deficit.....

irrelevant tbh. It's important that those largely responsible don't get away without taking some pain simply because it's not going to make much differance to the deficit. Really, in a recession caused by reckless lending, all bank bonuses should be 100% taxed until a period of sustained growth.

I also think those found to have been recklessly irresponsible in gambling away the economy and peoples jobs and futures should be jailed. That wont do anything for the deficit either but it's important to punish those responsible. All this tax is doing is not rewarding them beyond their already excessive basic salary. It's only a token gesture to appease the left as you say, but it's better than doing nothing at all and letting them away scot free while everyone else pays for it.

Fratton Fred

Yixian wrote: »

Also Dublin has about 2 billion times more diversity than Zurich or Dubai, both homologous bankscapes.

London is 70% white British. Dublin is 80% white Irish. There's plenty of diversity these days dude..

How long have you been in London, because i think you need to see a bit more of it.

jump on the Jubilee line and stop off at Canary Wharf, take a mooch around. For lunch, maybe you could stop at Jamie olivers new restaruant (it is very good and not that expensive).

Then catch the DLR to Bank and take a walk around the Royal Exchange building, maybe pick up a present for your girlfriend from Tiffany, or a new watch from Bulgari. Now, that important business meeting in the afternoon in Frankfurt, are you going to catch the Gatwick express, the Heathrow Express, the Stansted express or the DLR back out to London City airport (I would suggest the latter).

Lets compare this to working inGrand canal. you could grab a bagette from Spar, then get the Dart to Pearse staion, walk 15 minutes up to Brown Thomas, then walk back to Pearse, get the train to connolly, then walk to the bus station before taking the 45 minute bus journey to the Airport.

Don't try and compare the two cities, they don't compare.

Connemara is nice, so is Donegal, but I don't see thousands of businesses wanting to move there tomorrow.

woodseb

clown bag wrote: »

irrelevant tbh.

it's very relevant when it was announced as a headline grabber in the Greek government's plan to reduce the deficit - it shows the leaders there are more interested in playing politics rather than dealing with the issues - it's quiet depressing really

the tax is just punative and petty and will likely fail to tackle the real problem which is structural rather than in the banks. if bankers are guilty of breaking the law - let them hang by all means

Yixian

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Then catch the DLR to Bank and take a walk around the Royal Exchange building, maybe pick up a present for your girlfriend from Tiffany, or a new watch from Bulgari. Now, that important business meeting in the afternoon in Frankfurt, are you going to catch the Gatwick express, the Heathrow Express, the Stansted express or the DLR back out to London City airport (I would suggest the latter).

Lets compare this to working inGrand canal. you could grab a bagette from Spar, then get the Dart to Pearse staion, walk 15 minutes up to Brown Thomas, then walk back to Pearse, get the train to connolly, then walk to the bus station before taking the 45 minute bus journey to the Airport.

First of all, Jamie Oliver is a mediocre chef, you need to try a Ramsay. Secondly, you can buy Bulgari in pretty much any capital city in the world. Thirdly, Metro North and the Interconnector are going to give Dublin better infrastructure than many major European cities - in the Docklands? Get the metro to St Stephens Green where you change lines up to the airport.

And as for picking up a bagette from Spar on the Grand Canal - there are no Spars by the new theatre, there is however, fine dining aboard the floating restaurant La Peniche.


You really need to get a clue mate, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

By virtue of it's size and head start in prosperity, London obviously has numerically more to do and more diversity, but Dublin has a crapton to do with added bonus of not being as miserable as London (aaah the tube at 7am in the morning, or 6pm in the evening for that matter) and with a far lower crime rate.

I'm lucky, I have access to both cities, but I wouldn't dream of living permanently or raising a family in London when you have the option of a nice, safe, growing and pleasant city like Dublin that itself has so much to do, and more and more every year. Stockholm, Cologne, Rotterdam.. cities like this are what Dublin should and seems to be aspiring to.

P. Breathnach

woodseb wrote: »

... the tax is just punative and petty and will likely fail to tackle the real problem which is structural rather than in the banks. if bankers are guilty of breaking the law - let them hang by all means

I can't comment knowledgeably on the Greek situation, but I am alarmed that, worldwide, the banks seem to be persisting with the model for rewarding staff that they have had for some years past. This means commissions and bonuses for staff who sold products that were ultimately loss-making on a scale so large as to be beyond our ordinary comprehension, and grotesquely high executive salaries for those who presided over the financial sector departing from the world of ordinary reality where risk is a word that describes something that has a reasonable chance of happening. That kind of incentivisation, where people are rewarded for doing something that is ultimately bad business, is a structural problem. It doesn't matter whether it is legal or not: it should be discouraged.

Yes, an economy can have a structural problem (a fact of which we have become painfully aware). But so, too, can a bank or an entire banking sector. You can make a good case for saying that the structural problem in our economy has been largely caused by a structural problem in our banking sector.

Fratton Fred

Yixian wrote: »

First of all, Jamie Oliver is a mediocre chef, you need to try a Ramsay. Secondly, you can buy Bulgari in pretty much any capital city in the world. Thirdly, Metro North and the Interconnector are going to give Dublin better infrastructure than many major European cities - in the Docklands? Get the metro to St Stephens Green where you change lines up to the airport.

And as for picking up a bagette from Spar on the Grand Canal - there are no Spars by the new theatre, there is however, fine dining aboard the floating restaurant La Peniche.


You really need to get a clue mate, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

what metro? it doesn't exist.

Trust me, I have worked in Grand canal, Canary Wharf and the Square mile and Dublin just is not comparable.

I just can't see any compelling arguement why a major bank would want to move here from London, when there are dozens of European cities that would fit the bill a lot better.

woodseb

P. Breathnach wrote: »

grotesquely high executive salaries for those who presided over the financial sector departing from the world of ordinary reality where risk is a word that describes something that has a reasonable chance of happening. That kind of incentivisation, where people are rewarded for doing something that is ultimately bad business, is a structural problem. It doesn't matter whether it is legal or not: it should be discouraged.

rewarding anybody for doing something that turns ultimately bad is indeed bad business and the compensation structure needs to be addressed to take into account stready profits, but it needs to be addressed in the right way (some smart structures have been put in place like in credit suisse where part of the bonus pool in linked to the performance of a toxic debt portfolio)-

a punative tax across everybody is not the answer and it is just pandering to the masses who are on a witchhunt for the head of any banker in receipt of high salaries.

there are many different types of employees in banking/finance and the majority of them do not work in areas that generate the type of macro risk found in the credit crisis - whether the salary/bonus they earn is grotesque is a matter of opinion but if you look at the profits and talented trader/investment banker can earn for a bank - their ultimate pay package is usually quite fair

you also need to look at the effect on the current economy of a something like a 90% tax on banking bonuses.....it would discourage any risk taking in an environment where lending to businesses/people in a recession is inherently risky

Fratton Fred

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I can't comment knowledgeably on the Greek situation, but I am alarmed that, worldwide, the banks seem to be persisting with the model for rewarding staff that they have had for some years past. This means commissions and bonuses for staff who sold products that were ultimately loss-making on a scale so large as to be beyond our ordinary comprehension, and grotesquely high executive salaries for those who presided over the financial sector departing from the world of ordinary reality where risk is a word that describes something that has a reasonable chance of happening. That kind of incentivisation, where people are rewarded for doing something that is ultimately bad business, is a structural problem. It doesn't matter whether it is legal or not: it should be discouraged.

Yes, an economy can have a structural problem (a fact of which we have become painfully aware). But so, too, can a bank or an entire banking sector. You can make a good case for saying that the structural problem in our economy has been largely caused by a structural problem in our banking sector.

You have to careful in labelling all banks (and all parts of banks) in the same way.

Take Lehman Brothers for example, their trading arm was making an awful lot of money and was very succesful, the same with RBS and Barclays. The trouble was/is, they got dragged down by their securities side.

Why shoud the trading arm lose their bonuses when they have done nothing wrong? yes, the idiots that exposed them to the US Sub prime market should have their testicles put through a very small mangle, but the traders carried on doing what they do and delivered good results. If these guys get scared off, then the banks face losing their biggest (and only) source of income.

I don't agree with the bonus culture of the city (I have just finished reading City Boy and it is a fascinating read) but there is, I believe, a thin line here between cutting down on the bonus culture and scaring good people off to the Caymen islands.

Yixian

Fratton Fred wrote: »

what metro? it doesn't exist.

Trust me, I have worked in Grand canal, Canary Wharf and the Square mile and Dublin just is not comparable.

I just can't see any compelling arguement why a major bank would want to move here from London, when there are dozens of European cities that would fit the bill a lot better.

To the former, it's being built.

To the latter, how many times does it have to be said, look at Dubai.

Dr Galen

actually Dubai and FrattonFred just finishing reading the book City Boy are linked.

Oil traders.......thats why they are in Dubai. The Merc started it off and some others have followed. We'll see how many are still there in 10 or 15 years tbh

Yixian

Mystik Monkey wrote: »

actually Dubai and FrattonFred just finishing reading the book City Boy are linked.

Oil traders.......thats why they are in Dubai. The Merc started it off and some others have followed. We'll see how many are still there in 10 or 15 years tbh

What I meant was, Dubai is about the most culturally desolate place on earth and still they flocked there, so regardless of whether you agree with me or Fratton Fred, it's irrelevant - bankers and investors go where the money is. If it was in Port-au-Prince, they'd go to Port-au-Prince.

Fratton Fred

Yixian wrote: »

What I meant was, Dubai is about the most culturally desolate place on earth and still they flocked there, so regardless of whether you agree with me or Fratton Fred, it's irrelevant - bankers and investors go where the money is. If it was in Port-au-Prince, they'd go to Port-au-Prince.

yes they do.

When Ireland starts creating a multi trillion dollar playground, then the bankers will follow. there is no money (as such) in Dublin for the bankers and investors to chase. Go out and persuade a few hundred Arab Billionsaires to relocate to Dublin and build maybe the tallest building in Europe, Europe's first 7 star hotel and then maybe turn the temperature up a few degrees and put a roof over the place and I'm sure the bankers would follow.:D

DJDC

There's a lot of people here who clearly have never worked in the "Investment Banking" industry. Especially the guy lavishing praise on Paris as a choice destination for bankers. Give me a break, France with its socialist system (35 hour working week, 50%+ taxes) is ideologically opposed to Investment Banking which is the defintion of the Anglo Saxon philosophy of unrestrained capitalism. The French Unions make SIPTU et al. look like Gordon Gekko and even French companies like EDF have their trading businesses in London.

The problem for Dublin is that it is currently nothing more than a large back office. The standard of people working here is abysmal when compared to London, NY, SGP etc. The majority are accountants and clerks who have no idea about revenue generating roles. There are some trading houses like SIG but they are outnumbered massively by beancounters.

If Dublin wants to attract top talent it will need to do the job of the Swiss Cantons and allow negotiations on taxable income (you can get your income tax capped to 10% there). However this is simply not going to happen in the current climate where FF are terrified of being nice to bankers.

ei.sdraob

what do people think of this bright idea to invite more bankers here

now that primetime made a show on bankers

:eek:

damnyanks

Pretty poor pipe dream. If any banks start to move they will just move to their secondary hub (Switz or Frankfurt). Dublin needs to compete with the likes of Milan and Madrid as a financial center before it can even consider stealing large chunks of business from the UK.

We're tiny and insignificant. Simple