Geeks at the gates
Hampered by increasingly complex regulations, as well as the cost and inertia of inefficient legacy systems, banks are facing growing competition from innovative non-bank organisations. Unless they start to confront the mission-critical importance of transforming their technology, could they face death by a thousand cuts?
When Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought RJR Nabisco in 1988, it inspired the book – later a movie – Barbarians at the Gates. The episode helped create the myth that financiers were the masters of the universe and became the stuff of nightmares for successive generations of corporate chief executives.
Today, there has been something of a role reversal. Most institutional financiers are mired in new
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