Computers Are the Only Worthwhile Asset Banks Have Left
John Naughton: Consolidation of the banking sector will have a major impact on industries that supply banks with IT products
Every cloud has a silver lining. Ask the cybersquatters. Even as the short-selling vultures began circling Lehman Brothers, HBOS, Merrill Lynch and co, a legion of entrepreneurs began betting on domain names for hastily merged financial institutions. For example, when Barclays and Bank of America began to emerge as buyers for Lehman, names such as barclayslehman.com and bofalehman.com were promptly registered by enterprising hopefuls.
Some of these domains were being offered for sale on eBay last week. For example, www.bankofamericamerrilllynch.com was available at a starting bid of $1,500. 'With a deal between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch NOW ANNOUNCED', burbled the seller, 'this domain name will soon be incredibly popular. This is the only domain name that conveys the full picture, using the name of both firms... This is the most comprehensive and commonsensical domain name available concerning the MERGER OF BANK OF AMERICA CORP AND MERRILL LYNCH & CO.' The last time your columnist checked, however, the auction had attracted no bidders. Still - nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The proud owner of lloydstsbhbos.com, for his part, disdained eBay and simply set up a website with lots of ad links, clearly hoping to squeeze some Google juice from his property while waiting for the lawyers to call. Hope springs eternal in some breasts.
But this is merely froth. Wall Street banks have become insatiable consumers of IT services and some of the fallen giants had built up formidable computational resources, which were viewed by their purchasers as virtually the only non-toxic assets that they possessed. According to specialist website Datacenterknowledge.com, Lehman Brothers' two data centers were central to the deal in which Barclays paid $1.75bn to acquire most of Lehman's North American operations. The data centers and Lehman's headquarters building 'accounted for $1.5bn of the deal's value, with the British bank paying just $250m in cash for Lehman's North American investment banking and capital markets businesses,' it said.
The breakneck consolidation of the banking sector is going to have a major impact on industries that supply banks with IT products and services. Within institutions, the imperative will be to minimize avoidable turmoil in the infrastructure. That means, for example, planned upgrades to Vista suddenly become non-starters - which implies that the related purchase of higher-specification PCs may also be postponed. So the crash will affect Microsoft (which is refusing to reveal data about how many Vista licenses have actually been activated) and hardware vendors such as Dell, Lenovo and HP.
There will be pressure on IT departments to reduce headcount and budget. There are, of course, some areas where economizing isn't an option: banks running trading systems with millisecond response times will still need very expensive, on-site technical support. But managers will be searching for ways of trimming the costs of supporting more routine office functions.
In those circumstances, options like 'grid computing' and web services - where IT services are supplied by servers over the internet - may suddenly begin to look more attractive. Harassed managers may also start to look at open-source software as a way of avoiding expensive licensing deals for proprietary applications.
The waves generated by Wall Street Crash 2.0 will also wash up on very distant shores. Expect to see them in Bangalore, for example, and other Indian centers that have ridden the boom in outsourcing of IT support. As Western institutions disappear or merge, there will be a need to liquidate or consolidate the service contracts they have with Indian companies. So service businesses that looked rock-solid six months ago are in for a turbulent time.
As always in financial crashes, there will be opportunities for those who - like Barclays with Lehman - can spot an opening. There's been a niche market for years in software for assessing credit risk. Developers who come up with smarter algorithms for spotting turkeys can expect to name their price.
Oh - but if you were thinking of registering wallstreetcrash.com or bankersarewankers.com, forget it: they're already taken.
Some of these domains were being offered for sale on eBay last week. For example, www.bankofamericamerrilllynch.com was available at a starting bid of $1,500. 'With a deal between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch NOW ANNOUNCED', burbled the seller, 'this domain name will soon be incredibly popular. This is the only domain name that conveys the full picture, using the name of both firms... This is the most comprehensive and commonsensical domain name available concerning the MERGER OF BANK OF AMERICA CORP AND MERRILL LYNCH & CO.' The last time your columnist checked, however, the auction had attracted no bidders. Still - nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The proud owner of lloydstsbhbos.com, for his part, disdained eBay and simply set up a website with lots of ad links, clearly hoping to squeeze some Google juice from his property while waiting for the lawyers to call. Hope springs eternal in some breasts.
But this is merely froth. Wall Street banks have become insatiable consumers of IT services and some of the fallen giants had built up formidable computational resources, which were viewed by their purchasers as virtually the only non-toxic assets that they possessed. According to specialist website Datacenterknowledge.com, Lehman Brothers' two data centers were central to the deal in which Barclays paid $1.75bn to acquire most of Lehman's North American operations. The data centers and Lehman's headquarters building 'accounted for $1.5bn of the deal's value, with the British bank paying just $250m in cash for Lehman's North American investment banking and capital markets businesses,' it said.
The breakneck consolidation of the banking sector is going to have a major impact on industries that supply banks with IT products and services. Within institutions, the imperative will be to minimize avoidable turmoil in the infrastructure. That means, for example, planned upgrades to Vista suddenly become non-starters - which implies that the related purchase of higher-specification PCs may also be postponed. So the crash will affect Microsoft (which is refusing to reveal data about how many Vista licenses have actually been activated) and hardware vendors such as Dell, Lenovo and HP.
There will be pressure on IT departments to reduce headcount and budget. There are, of course, some areas where economizing isn't an option: banks running trading systems with millisecond response times will still need very expensive, on-site technical support. But managers will be searching for ways of trimming the costs of supporting more routine office functions.
In those circumstances, options like 'grid computing' and web services - where IT services are supplied by servers over the internet - may suddenly begin to look more attractive. Harassed managers may also start to look at open-source software as a way of avoiding expensive licensing deals for proprietary applications.
The waves generated by Wall Street Crash 2.0 will also wash up on very distant shores. Expect to see them in Bangalore, for example, and other Indian centers that have ridden the boom in outsourcing of IT support. As Western institutions disappear or merge, there will be a need to liquidate or consolidate the service contracts they have with Indian companies. So service businesses that looked rock-solid six months ago are in for a turbulent time.
As always in financial crashes, there will be opportunities for those who - like Barclays with Lehman - can spot an opening. There's been a niche market for years in software for assessing credit risk. Developers who come up with smarter algorithms for spotting turkeys can expect to name their price.
Oh - but if you were thinking of registering wallstreetcrash.com or bankersarewankers.com, forget it: they're already taken.
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