Professor John Board appointed as the new Dean of Henley Business School

The large fine imposed on RBS last week suggests that a ‘scandal’ took place in the banking world over the setting of LIBOR. Yes – there was probably systematic mis-pricing of LIBOR which enabled some traders and some banks to profit at the expense of others. But the LIBOR issue simply highlights a much wider problem in financial markets which is that many ‘prices’ quoted in markets are not market prices at all. Instead they are prices based on computer models, matrix pricing or sheer guesswork, which may or may not produce ‘accurate’ prices. The reason for using computers models and guesswork is that in many financial products there actually are no transactions at all or very few even over periods of some weeks or months and thus no market prices.

The first Industry Insight event of this year was presented by Jake King-Smith and organised by the ICMA Centre in partnership with the University of Reading Finance Society. During the talk, Mr. Smith took us through his career from Merrill Lynch to Goldman Sachs, as well as giving us advice to secure a position in Investment Banking.

No less than seven ICMA Centre BSc students have been awarded Achievement Prizes this year. The students were presented with their awards by the Vice Chancellor at a special ceremony in the Great Hall today.