"Simply Not Good Enough" - $234 billion ML scandal at Danske Bank focuses on Estonian branch where red flags were raised in 2014, IT Partly Blamed

The money laundering scandal at Danske Bank (literally "Danish Bank", whose motto is "Making More Possible") led to the resignation of Thomas Borgen, CEO. Denmark's business minister, Rasmus Jarlov, expressed his disappointment, with the remark "simply not good enough". Shares fell by 8% as the bank admitted a "significant part of the payments" were suspicious. A whistleblower raised concerns in the Estonian branch as early as 2014 but this was not properly investigated and information was not shared with the board. Prior to resigning, Borgen had been cutting costs and shifting the bank's focus to wealthier clients to compete with Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank. IT has been partly blamed, with a decision not to integrate the Danske Bank Group platform into the Estonian subsidiary, evading AML procedures as well as transaction and risk monitoring.

Don't Blame Brexit is War Cry from LMH Grad Dom Raab

Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab (who took over from David Davis in July 2018), is chastising companies for blaming bad performance on Brexit. This is particularly in light of John Lewis' reported 99% drop in first half profits. Sir Richard Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, said "these are challenging times in retail". Dominic studied at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. Richard (real first name Andrew) has an MBA from Cranfield.

Auto-Ethernet Extravaganza - NXP Swallows OmniPHY

The world's largest supplier of automotive chips, NXP Semiconductors, has announced its acquisition of OmniPHY, a networking IP startup, for better bandwidth on its Ethernet solutions, for an undisclosed sum. This will complement NXP's existing products based on standards like CAN, LIN and FlexRay.

OmniPHY has been a regular on the conference trail showcasing its Automotive IP solutions and support for cars becoming "Servers on Wheels". The suffix PHY comes from the IEEE shortform for a physical layer communication protocol.

Alexander Tan is NXP's Vice President of Automotive Ethernet Solutions since May 2017, based in San Jose, California, and has Ethernet experience from Fairfield County-founded National Semiconductor (now acquired by Texas Instruments) and other firms.

CAN standard (Controller Area Network) is a vehicle bus standard that allows microcontrollers to communicate, via a message-based protocol, in applications without a host computer. Development on the CAN bus started in 1983 at Bosch, with the first chips produced by Intel and Philips. The first production vehicle to employ this technology was the Mercedes-Benz W140 in 1991.

LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is a cheaper to implement version of CAN. It was created in the 1990s by the LIN Consortium founded by five automakers (BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz).

Arg Peso Crisis As Pres Macri Invokes Austerity as Leliq Rate Rises to 60%, Brazil Struggling

Argentina has announced sweeping reforms to kill the budget deficit in the wake of the peso crisis and to create conditions to enable a $50bn funding opportunity from the IMF. 2018 has seen the peso slide to 50% of its value against the dollar. The raising of USD interest rates has made it harder for certain countries, Argentina included, to pay its dollar-denominated debts. Argentina's central bank  (BCRA - Banco Central de la Republica Argentina) also raised its benchmark Leliq rate to 60% at the end of August to stablise the currency. With the Turkish lira down 44% against the dollar talk of an emerging market contagion is worrying investors. The Brazilian real is the third-worst performing EM currency down 20% against the dollar.