Business automation in investment banking: fast forward…. or not?

The technology says fast forward, but the organisation says it’s going to take a lot longer than you think, write Leslie Willcocks and Andrew Crai

Change, Dependency, and Regime Plasticity in Offshore Financial Intermediation: The Saga of the Netherlands Antilles

The legal regimes of offshore jurisdictions have historically differed in significant ways from those applicable in onshore jurisdictions. Inevitably, legal and financial professionals have seized upon these differences to develop strategies for reducing transactions costs. A prominent example of such cross-border arbitrage was the routing of Eurodollar loans through a small group of former Dutch island colonies in the Caribbean, a practice which peaked in the mid-1980s, when virtually every major U.S. corporation made interest payments to a Netherlands Antilles finance subsidiary. The Antilles sandwich strategy exploited the difference between high U.S. withholding tax rates that applied to interest payments made to most foreign lenders, and the zero rate of tax that applied to U.S. interest payments made to residents of the Antilles under its tax treaty with the United States. Both jurisdictions reaped significant benefits from the strategy until the United States unilaterally terminated the tax treaty in 1987, virtually wiping out the Antilles offshore financial sector overnight. Unfortunately, because of rigidity in its governance structure, the Antilles failed to develop alternative financial intermediation strategies to replace the Antilles sandwich structure before its demise. The rise and fall of the Antilles\u27 offshore financial sector provides insight into the current struggle between onshore and offshore governments over the role of offshore financial centers like the Antilles within the global economy. Concerned about tax evasion by their residents, onshore jurisdictions including France, Germany, and the United States are pressing for major changes in offshore jurisdictions\u27 legal and regulatory regimes that may eliminate legitimate opportunities for international arbitrage. In such an environment, offshore financial centers may find it difficult to survive. In this article, we distill from the Antilles experience a theory of regime plasticity and examine the role that it plays in allowing offshore financial centers to adapt to changes in the legal and political environments within which they operate. How offshore financial centers react, and whether they have learned the lessons of the Antilles\u27 experience will play a major role in determining the future of the global offshore financial sector

Constitutionalizing Patents: From Venice to Philadelphia

Patent law today is a complex institution in most developed economies and the appropriate structure for patent law is hotly debated around the world. Despite their differences, one crucial feature is shared by the diverse patent systems of the industrialized world even before the recent trend toward harmonization: modern patent regimes include self-imposed restrictions of executive and legislative discretion, which we refer to as constitutionalized systems. Given the lucrative nature of patent monopolies, the long history of granting patents as a form of patronage, and the aggressive pursuit of patronage in most societies, the choice to confine patents within a legal framework that minimized the potential for gain by current office holders requires explanation. Why choose to constitutionalize patents? This paper answers these questions by examining three salient constitutionalizng events through the lens of public choice theory. First, the ground breaking Venetian statute of 1474, the first modern patent system; second, the British experience with patents that led to the 1624 Statute of Monopolies, one of the key foundations of the U.S. patent system; and lastly, the American Founders\u27 adoption of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, which grants the power to, and sets forth the manner in which, the national government can issue patents. We argue that creating constitutional patent law institutions offered the opportunity to both increase the durability of the bargain between the state and the inventor and, in some cases, to limit the grant of patents to those most likely to increase the general welfare. Based on the historical analysis, we derive three desirable features for patent law institutions: (1) strong constraints on the type of patents that can be issued, limiting them to areas in which there is evidence that the costs of the limits to competition imposed are justified by the benefits produced by the incentives created; (2) an independent institution capable of reviewing the grant of a patent in a timely and final manner, to ensure the constitutional bargain is kept; and (3) patents that provide their owners with a sense of security in the validity and scope of their property right, to maximize the value of the bargaining chip offered to inventors. Our analysis thus offers lessons for countries considering new patent law institutions or modifying existing ones

Monolithically integrated InAsSb-based nBnBn heterostructure on GaAs for infrared detection

High operating temperature i nfrared photo detectors with multi -color function that are capable of monolithic integration are of increasing importance in developing the next generation of mid -IR imag e sensors. Applications of these sensors include defense, medical diagnosis, environmental and astronomical observations. We have investigated a novel InAsSb -based nBnBn heterostructure that combines a state -of-art InAsSb nBn detector with an InAsSb/GaSb heterojuncti on detector . At room temperature, r educti on in the dark current density of more than an order of magnitude was achieved compared to previously investigated InAsSb/GaSb heterojunction dete ctors . Electrical characterization from cryogenic temperatures to roo m temperature confirmed that the nBnBn device was diffusion limited for temperature s above 150K. O ptical measurements demonstrated that the nBnBn detector was sensitive in both the SWIR and MWIR wavelength range at room temperature . The specific detectivity (D*) of the competed nBnBn devices was calculated to be 8.6 × 10 8 cm · Hz 1/2 W -1 at 300K and approximately 1.0 × 10 10 cm · Hz 1/2 W -1 when cooled down to 200K (with 0.3V reverse bias and 1550nm illumination ). In addition, all photodetector layers were grown monolithically on GaAs active layers u sing the interfacial misfit array growth mode . Our results therefore pave the way for the development of new active pixel designs for monolithically integrated mid -IR imaging arrays

Synthetic lethal analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans posterior embryonic patterning genes identifies conserved genetic interactions

Phenotypic robustness is evidenced when single-gene mutations do not result in an obvious phenotype. It has been suggested that such phenotypic stability results from 'buffering' activities of homologous genes as well as non-homologous genes acting in parallel pathways. One approach to characterizing mechanisms of phenotypic robustness is to identify genetic interactions, specifically, double mutants where buffering is compromised. To identify interactions among genes implicated in posterior patterning of the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo, we measured synthetic lethality following RNA interference of 22 genes in 15 mutant strains. A pair of homologous T-box transcription factors (tbx-8 and tbx-9) is found to interact in both C. elegans and C. briggsae, indicating that their compensatory function is conserved. Furthermore, a muscle module is defined by transitive interactions between the MyoD homolog hlh-1, another basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, hnd-1, and the MADS-box transcription factor unc-120. Genetic interactions within a homologous set of genes involved in vertebrate myogenesis indicate broad conservation of the muscle module and suggest that other genetic modules identified in C. elegans will be conserved