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Citigroup Executive Pleads Guilty to Insider Theft of Millions
Gary Foster, a former vice president in Citigroup, Inc.'s treasury finance department, pleaded guilty today to bank fraud arising from his embezzlement of more than $22 million from Citigroup.
Foster entered his plea before the Hon. Eric N. Vitaliano, United States District Judge, at the United States Courthouse in Brooklyn.
The guilty plea was announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office.
According to the charging documents, between September 2003 and June 2011, Foster first transferred money from various Citigroup accounts to Citigroup's cash account, then wired the money to his personal bank account at another bank.
Foster concealed his thefts by making various false accounting entries to create the appearance that the cash account was in balance and by placing a fraudulent contract or deal number in the reference line of the wire transfer instructions to give the appearance that the wire transfers were actually in support of an existing Citigroup contract.
Foster used the money to buy real estate and luxury automobiles, including a Ferrari and a Maserati. The government has restrained real estate purchased by Foster in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey and seized numerous luxury automobiles and bank accounts that Foster controlled.
In total, the value of the seized and restrained property is estimated to be approximately $16 million. Foster will forfeit the property pursuant to his plea agreement.
"The defendant violated his employer's trust and stole a stunning amount of money over an extended period of time to finance his personal lifestyle," stated United States Attorney Lynch.
"We will vigorously investigate and prosecute such conduct and seek to recover as much of the proceeds as possible."
"Foster exploited his position as a trusted insider to embezzle tens of millions of dollars and to conceal the theft for as long as possible. The FBI is determined to uncover bank larceny in any form," said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Fedarcyk.
The defendant faces a maximum sentence of 30 years' imprisonment on the bank fraud charges. The government's case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Michael L. Yaeger and Karen R. Hennigan.
Source: http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2011/former-citigroup-vice-president-pleads-guilty-to-bank-fraud-for-embezzling-more-than-22-million
White House Announces Initiative to Combat Botnets
Cyber Threats to Democracy?
Key Risk Management Issues For 2016
HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Resigns
Control Systems Company Resolves Criminal Violations
Categories: Enterprise Security
Tags: Legal fraud Insider Threats FBI Headlines Employees Executives Citigroup


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Category: NextCapital
Wednesday January 17 2018, Daily News Digest
News Comments Today's main news: Wells Fargo is closing branches left and right. Repeal of payday lending rule under consideration. Moody's assigns provisional ratings to SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A-LLC. RateSetter leads in personal loans. Curve launches. Victory Park Capital looks overseas. Today's main analysis: How Lendix blazes a trail in SME lending. Today's thought-provoking articles: Why regulation is crucial. Wells […]
Today's main news: Wells Fargo is closing branches left and right. Repeal of payday lending rule under consideration. Moody's assigns provisional ratings to SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A-LLC. RateSetter leads in personal loans. Curve launches. Victory Park Capital looks overseas.
Today's main analysis: How Lendix blazes a trail in SME lending.
Today's thought-provoking articles: Why regulation is crucial. Wells Fargo is closing branches left and right. Is KinerjaPay the crypto to own? Fintechs snagged a third of African investment in 2017.
Wells Fargo aggressive on bank closures. AT: "This isn't necessarily the end of banking, but it does spell out how alternative lending has disrupted the traditional financial ecosystem. The bank of the future will definitely not look like the bank of today thanks to alternative lenders."
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau considers payday lending rule repeal. AT: "Who didn't see it coming?"
Moody's assigns provisional ratings to SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A-LLC.
Magilla Loans surpasses $4.5B in loan originations. AT: "Congratulations."
UpLift raises $90M. AT: "Great achievement. Congratulations."
NextCapital gets $30M VC funding. AT: "Congrats."
Better Mortgage expands into Texas.
Lend Academy interviews Laurel Road CEO.
Mixed report on student loan refinancing.
Reliamax: More private student loans.
CreditVest opens crowdfunding advice firm.
Zelle advertises on TV.
M1 Financing criticized for going free.
Tipalti launches payables automation partner program.
Stockholder inspection rights in Delaware.
RateSetter leads in personal loans.
Curve launches.
P2P lending could be a lifeline for landowners.
Marketsflow raises 562K GBP on Crowdcube.
4 technologies driving change in financial markets.
5 top alt investments.
Beyond PSD2, GDPR, what guides visitors through open banking?
One fourth of very low-income households are behind on debt repayment.
Why regulation is crucial.
Regulator says fintech must serve the real economy.
Lendix raises 200M Euro.
Robo.Cash shares insight on investor activity.
Energy crowdfunding.
Swaper offers one-click portfolio investing.
VPC considers overseas opportunities.
Ethereum creator releases new ICO model.
Is KPAY the crypto to own this year?
Asian stocks bounce back.
Fintech startups took one-third of African VC investment last year. AT: "East Africa is a hotbed of activity right now."
There's still a market for short-term loans.
Wells Fargo is getting more aggressive with branch closures (Tearsheet), Rated: AAA
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau considering repeal of payday lending rule (NBC News), Rated: AAA
Moody's assigns provisional ratings to SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A LLC (Moody's), Rated: AAA
Magilla Loans Platform Surpasses $ 4.5B Loan Origination Milestone (PR Newswire), Rated: A
UpLift Closes Financings of $ 90M (FINSMES), Rated: A
NextCapital does $ 30-million VC round with a staggering objective that's taking shape first with John Hancock (RIABiz), Rated: A
Borrowers in the Lone Star State Can Now Get a Better Mortgage (Digital Journal), Rated: A
Gary Lieberman of Laurel Road (Lend Academy), Rated: A
Refinancing Student Loans Gets Mixed Report (247WallSt), Rated: A
Reliamax's Michael VanErdewyk: 'We're seeing a move towards more private student loans' (Tearsheet), Rated: A
CreditVest starts crowdfunding advisory firm (BizJournals.com), Rated: B
Zelle is now running TV ads (Tearsheet), Rated: A
An investing platform founded by a 25-year-old went free — and now it's facing a backlash from its rivals (Business Insider), Rated: A
Tipalti Launches Payables Automation Partner Program (BusinessWire), Rated: A
STOCKHOLDER INSPECTION RIGHTS SURVIVE CHALLENGE IN DELAWARE (AllAboutAlpha), Rated: A
RateSetter leading the way for personal loans (RateCity), Rated: AAA
Curve, the fintech that connects all your cards to a single card and app, gets full consumer launch (TechCrunch), Rated: AAA
How P2P could be a financial lifeline for UK landowners (Bridging&Commercial), Rated: A
Robo advice platform citing AI and machine learning raises £562k on Crowdcube (AltFi), Rated: A
What we learned about fintech from some of the biggest brains at Clifford Chance (Legal Cheek), Rated: A
5 Top Alternative Investments in the UK (What Investment), Rated: B
After PSD2 and GDPR, what Wayfinding Signs will guide visitors through an Open Bank? (LinkedIn), Rated: A
One quarter of very low-income households behind on bills or debt repayment (Holyrood), Rated: A
'Freedom at a Price': Why Regulation Is Crucial to Fintech's Future (Wharton), Rated: AAA
China regulator says fintech must serve real economy (Finextra), Rated: A
Lendix Raises €200 Million Institutional Financing to Trailblaze European Alternative SME Finance (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: AAA
Online Lender Robo.Cash Shares Insight into Investor Activity (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: A
Approaching energy crowdfunding with eyes wide open (YourIS.com), Rated: A
Swaper Offers One-Click Portfolio Investing (Benzinga), Rated: B
Top backer of US subprime lenders eyes overseas opportunities (Financial Times), Rated: AAA
Vitalik Buterin Releases Revolutionary New DAICO Model for ICOs (The Merkle), Rated: A
New Crypto Exchange and 1000 Percent Revenue Growth Could Make KPAY The Crypto Stock To Own In 2018 (Baystreet), Rated: AAA
Asian stocks bounce back, with Hang Seng closing at a record (MarketWatch), Rated: A
Fintech startups took nearly a third of all African venture funding in 2017 (Quartz), Rated: AAA
Still a market for short-term loans (Edmonton Journal), Rated: A
Wells Fargo is charging toward its goal to cut over 800 branches by the end of 2020, it said in a presentation of its fourth quarter earnings on Friday.
Wells, which has been struggling to cut costs while it continues getting hit with legal fees following its various scandals, expects to save $4 billion as a result of the plan.
Source: Tearsheet
The bureau, which came under control of the Trump administration late last year, said in a statement Tuesday that it plans to take a second look at the payday lending rules. While the bureau did not submit a proposal to repeal the rules outright, the statement opens the door for the bureau to start the process of revising or even repealing the regulations. The bureau also said it would grant waivers to companies as the first sets of regulations going into effect later this year.
Moody's Investors Service has assigned provisional ratings of (P)Aaa (sf) to Class A-1 Notes, the Class A-2A Notes and the Class A-2B Notes to be issued by SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A LLC (SoFi 2018-A). The collateral underlying the transaction consists of SoFi's private student loans, which are loans the government does not guarantee. Our cumulative net loss expectation for SoFi 2018-A's loan pool is approximately 2.0%.
Issuer: SoFi Professional Loan Program 2018-A LLC
$55,000,000 Floating Rate Post-Graduate Loan Asset-Backed Class A-1 Notes, Assigned (P)Aaa (sf)
$358,500,000 Fixed Rate Post-Graduate Loan Asset-Backed Class A-2A Notes, Assigned (P)Aaa (sf)
$236,800,000 Fixed Rate Post-Graduate Loan Asset-Backed Class A-2B Notes, Assigned (P)Aaa (sf)
Magilla Loans, a search engine for loans that connects borrowers to banks without requesting personal information, announced it has surpassed $4.5 billion in aggregated loans from top banks across the U.S. The Magilla platform provides business owners with access to multiple financing options, including access to business, home and real estate loans.
UpLift, a Sunnyvale, CA-based travel financing company, closed financings of $90m.
The company received:
– a $75m credit facility in partnership with funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, and
– a $15m equity round which includes participation from previous investors including PAR Capital with Draper Nexus, Highgate Ventures, and former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford.
The shoot-the-moon robo strategy of NextCapital Advisers Inc. is looking up now that John Hancock Financial Services Inc. has come out of pilot and State Street Global Advisors became a partner in going after RIAs.
The Chicago-based digital advisor, founded in 2013, announced it more than doubled its backing with $30 million of venture round led this time led by Oak HC/FT of Greenwich, Conn. See: NextCapital raises $16 million as its founder goes where Financial Engines' 401(k) robo strategy didn't.
All told, the firm has raised $54 million: Six million dollars in August 2014, $18 million in 2015 and, just recently, this $30-million round.
Better Mortgage, a digital mortgage company focused on improving access to home financing for a new generation of homeowners, is now available to Texas homebuyers. Better will now be able to serve more than half of Americans who are looking to own or currently own a home. In 2017, Better expanded its footprint in major real estate markets around the country, with Texas being the latest licensed states.
Texas is Better's 14th market. In 2018, they expect to continue their expansion, focusing on geographies that help first-time homebuyers invest in their communities by putting down roots.
In this podcast you will learn:
The history of Darien Rowayton Bank.
Why Gary decided to buy this small community bank in 2010.
How the bank has grown since Gary took it over.
How student loan refinancing first got on his radar decades ago.
When DRB originated their first student loan.
The advantages of being a bank and a fintech platform.
Some of the affiliate partnerships DRB has.
Other verticals where DRB has offerings today.
Why DRB rebranded to Laurel Road in 2017.
The scale they are at today with student loan refinancing.
Their approach to securitization.
How their loans have been performing to date.
The profile of their typical borrower.
How they market their offerings.
What the future holds for Laurel Road.
More than 45 million Americans have borrowed $1.45 trillion in student loans to help pay for their post-secondary educations. Repaying those loans can be tough, especially if the loan amount is high and pay for the first job after graduation is low.
Student loan marketplace and refinancing website LendEDU has just released its second annual report on the state of the student loan refinancing market. Here are several highlights from the report:
Average credit score of an approved refinance applicant is 764.
Just over 58% of 2017 applications are denied.
The average interest rate on a refinanced loan is 5.56%. The average rate rose 74 basis points year over year from 4.82% in 2016.
The average size of a refinance loan was $66,453. The 2017 average was more than 23% higher year over year.
Less than half of approved applicants actually end up refinancing their loans. In 2016, just over 33% of all applicants completed the loan process.
With all the excitement around online lending, there are still some spaces that have a long growth runway. One of the most persuasive growth opportunities is private student lending. Macroeconomic and policy changes are contributing to the growth thesis but so too are the number of local lending institutions that want to move into this asset class.
Rising costs of higher education
The cost of education continues to increase and the number of kids in school isn't declining. So, it's a big opportunity. Really, we have to talk about the cost of education. The cost of higher education in the U.S. today costs over $400 billion a year. About 25 percent of that is free money (grants and scholarships). Another 25 percent is federal student loans. The remainder — about $200 billion a year — is really family contributions.
The focus on private student loans
If you look at the total outstanding student debt, there's about $1.4 trillion in federal student loans and $100 billion in private student loans, comprising only about 7 percent of total outstanding student debt.
Jon Mauro founded Realty Mentors with Andrea Humphrey, who is president and owner of CreditVest, to focus on individual investors who want to participate in commercial real estate crowdfunding.
Zelle is spending "tens of millions" of dollars on a television ad campaign featuring spoken word artist Daveed Diggs.
Early Warning, the bank-owned consortium behind the peer-to-peer payments platform, aired the first ad Saturday during the National Football League's divisional round of playoff games and will continue to run them alongside unifying cultural events like the Grammy Awards, the NBA All-Star Game and the Super Bowl pre-game show. They'll also run during popular shows on Bravo, Comedy Central, The Discovery Channel, ESPN and MTV.
Zelle is trying to build some brand recognition for itself among its target audience, mobile users, in an effort to compete with Venmo.
M1, which was founded by CEO Brian Barnes when he was 25, originally charged users 25 to 40 basis points to use its platform, which allows users to buy fractional stocks and invest in pre-built portfolios. In December, it decided to go free, and make money strictly on the backend, by selling flow to trading firms and lending out non-invested funds sitting in users' accounts to banks. The company also plans to offer margin trading to its users.
Since going free in December, M1 has seen daily inflows hit as high as $1 million, and a 10-fold increase in the number of new accounts each day.
Still, M1's robo rivals aren't convinced the strategy will work for the small company.
Tipalti, the leading global payables automation platform, today announced the launch of its Partner Program, which will offer accounting firms, financial institutions, system integrators, ERP resellers/VARs, consultants, and partners who work with the office of the CFO, the ability for their clients to leverage Tipalti's software to eliminate the friction, risk, and time spent on manual accounts payable operations.
Key Features of Tipalti's Partner Program:
Training and support for partners as they assist their clients
Option to pass exclusive savings on to their clients
Option to receive income stream through revenue-sharing
Low-impact engagement with minimal investment by partner
On December 29, 2017, the last business day of the expiring year, the Delaware Chancery Court, in a memorandum of opinion by Vice Chancellor Slights, upheld stockholders' statutory books-and-records inspection rights against a defendant corporation that sought to invoke and considerably to widen the scope of the Delaware Supreme Court's Corwin decision of 2015.
The significance of this is that Delaware, some impressions to the contrary, is not a corporate-management-always-wins state. It was not so before the Corwin decision, nor did that decision make it so. That ought to be good news for activist investors and their counsel. There may be alpha, or at least leverage toward alpha, lurking in the right to inspect books and records.
Interest rates for personal loans listed on RateCity range from as low as 3.57 per cent to as high as 48.00 per cent.
The average personal loan interest rate was 11.89 per cent at the end of December, according to an analysis of the dozens of lenders listed on RateCity.
RateSetter, a peer-to-peer lender, has a one-year unsecured personal loan with an advertised rate of 3.57 per cent and a comparison rate of 3.92 per cent.
Curve, the London fintech startup that offers a platform that lets you consolidate all your bank cards into a single Curve card and app to make it easier to manage your spending, is finally launching to U.K. consumers. Up until now, the service remained in beta and was only officially available to business users.
In a call with Curve founder and CEO Shachar Bialick, he described the consumer launch as a major milestone for the company, noting that 50,000 people have signed up to its waitlist, in addition to the 100,000 or so users who joined Curve in its beta phase. It's free to join, although a premium version of the Curve card is also available for £50 that offers additional perks.
A recent study of 172 farms by the Prince's Farm Resilience Programme found that just 16% made a profit from their farming activities over the period assessed. The analysis found that instead many farms are now reliant on alternative income streams to turn a profit, such as tourism, renewable energy and selling their products directly to consumers.
But moving into alternative areas of business requires capital. And – with the average farm in the study making a loss of more than £20,000 from its farming activities – it may be capital that landowners require to invest in their business to prevent a loss.
Folk2Folk champions local lending because we believe in creating financially and socially sustainable communities by matching local businesses with local lenders.
Marketsflow, a new digital wealth management platform closed its fully funded investment round via equity crowdfunding.
Initially looking to raise £210k, the fundraise has seen more than £562k of commitments from nearly 800 investors giving Marketsflow a pre-money valuation of £2.4m.
What kind of financial technology has come across your desk at Clifford Chance, then? (Here comes the educational bit.) Chapman identified four technologies driving change:
• Marketplace lending: crowdfunding or peer to peer lending, with the potential for "disintermediation" of the financial institution that used act as middleman for loans.
• Big data and AI: you might just have seen it in the newspapers. But it's closer than you think: if you've applied for a credit card, according to Chapman, chances are that a machine took part of the decision on whether or not to approve you.
• Mobile payments: forget branches, even internet banking on a web browser is old hat. Some banks, indeed, exist only as apps (I instantly thought of my Revolut app, which started out offering as a slick currency exchange platform, but is now offering credit).
• Blockchain and distributed ledger: different things, but often used in combination. These are "the pieces of technology that underpin the Bitcoin phenomenon". It's not just media hype, either: Clifford Chance is "seeing a lot of work in this space".
1. Crowdfunding
Rather than rely on venture capital trusts and angel investors, many new businesses are using crowdfunding to get off the ground. In fact, UK platforms such as CrowdCube and Angels Den have raised over £72 million from investors this year.
5. Peer-to-peer lending
Peer-to-peer lending allows you to loan money to people through online platforms, without a bank. These agreements are arranged through peer-to-peer lending platforms such as Zopa, Prosper and Lending Works. These peer-to-peer companies are typically FCA regulated and they organise credit and ID checks as well as set interest rates, collect payments and pay your returns.
When branch banking was the mainstream method of service distribution in financial services, both a bank's customers and potential business partners could follow clear signs that directed them where to go and who to contact. The first sign that a bank sent its customers and potential business partners was the geographic location of a bank branch.
One in four very-low income households are struggling to pay bills or debt, with 10 per cent spending more than a quarter of their salary on credit card repayments, a report has found.
Data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) showed one-sixth of the poorest households in Britain were in arrears on repayments and bills.
A further 10 per cent were spending at least a quarter of their monthly income on unsecured debts, such as credit cards and payday loans.
In recent years, financial technology, or fintech, has dramatically expanded financial inclusion in China and elsewhere in Asia. Small and midsized businesses that have been underserved by banks now have access to capital, as fintech enterprises use the internet and mobile technology to reach those borrowers; leverage data analytics to build credible and innovative risk profiles to gauge creditworthiness, and are able to scale their reach exponentially with 24/7 customer windows and without the baggage of fixed-cost overheads that typically shackle traditional banks. Not surprisingly, the unmet needs of the underserved have provided huge market potential for fintechs.
Credit China FinTech, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as Chong Sing Holdings FinTech Group Ltd., or CSF, provides third party payments, online investment, technology-enabled lending, and traditional loans and financing services. Today, it has more than 51 million users who generated transactions worth RMB 868 billion ($130 billion) in the first half of 2017.
At the same time, both have proved massively popular in China which accounts for roughly half of the world's digital payments and three-quarters of global, online P2P lending volume, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
For one, default rates are higher than anticipated on peer-to-peer lending platforms. Also, instead of being disrupted by the fintechs, traditional banks have entered the peer-to-peer lending space to become the dominant players, he added.
Jiang Yang, vice chairman of China's Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) was speaking at the Asian Financial Forum to an audience of fintech entrepreneurs. The development of fintechs should benefit the real economy and not "a small group of people", he said in comments reported by the Nikkei Financial Review.
The European Investment Bank Group (EIB), CNP Assurances, Eiffel IM, Groupama, Zencap AM, Matmut and Decaux Frères Investissements are among the first investors joining to finance Lendix's latest investment vehicle to fund unsecured loans to SMEs in France, Spain and Italy. New institutional investors from banks and asset management firms in Spain and Italy are joining. As of now, €120 million of the planned €200 million are already committed and the first loans from this fund will start rolling out as soon as February.
Source: Crowdfund Insider
As of December 2017, Lendix originated a cumulated worth of €143 million of SME loans, a 90% increase from 2016.
Peer to peer lender Robo.cash has shared a "financial portrait of a Robo.cash investor."
According to their results, investors from a younger age group, 18-24 years old, usually deposit circa €200 at a time and rarely withdrew any funds. The maximum funding size is characteristic of the older age groups: the average deposit of investors of 35-44 years old is equal to €879 and for those who are older than 45 years old is €838.
Millennials of 25-34 years of age invest about €679 on average making frequent deposits in comparison to the younger age group.
youris.com met Sissy Windisch, from the German company Green Crowding, who published a guide for new small investors, to allow them to make the best decisions. The document was released under the EU project CrowdFundRES.
This is a different kind of crowdfunding, unlike what platforms such as Kickstarter do?
With Kickstarter you donate money, so a comic book for example can be published, or you just want an artist to keep on creating art. Instead, the type of crowdfunding we are interested in is debt-based, which means that you get your money back plus interest. If you finance a solar roof on a school for five years, you get 3% every year and at the end of five years you get your money back.
Could you tell us more about debt-based crowdfunding?
Debt-based funding is already one of the largest types of crowdfunding. I would say one of the biggest areas in terms of funding volume at the moment is real estate. I think for 2016 alone the funding was estimated at around 3.5 billion dollars.
Why can't the traditional financial institutions, such as banks or investment firms, offer these services?
What we've often seen, particularly for renewables, is that banks and other traditional financial institutions often look for large projects to invest in. They prefer investing in one 50-million wind park than in 500 small photovoltaic installations.
What does your company do? What unique problem does it solve?
Swaper CEO Peteris Kisis: Swaper is a loan marketplace offering an easy investing in pre-funded consumer loans originated by its parent company Wandoo Finance Group in Poland, Georgia, Spain, Denmark and Russia. All investments offered on our marketplace start from 12 percent annual interest and are BuyBack guaranteed, meaning Swaper will compensate investors both for the invested principal and accrued interest in case the borrower is late with payments.
Victory Park Capital, a Chicago-based investment firm, has been a vital source of debt capital for a string of online lenders, including Avant, Elevate and LendUp, all of which focus on borrowers in the subprime segment. Total commitments and investments come to about $6.5bn from more than 90 deals, mostly in the US.
The firm, which was founded 10 years ago, is seeking to add to a portfolio including zip Money in Australia, Kreditech in Germany and Oakam in the UK.
(The Merkle), Rated: A
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of the Ethereum Network, recently proposed a new method for decentralized fundraising called the "DAICO". Incorporating elements of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, the new model is designed to minimize the complexity and risk associated with ICOs.
Buterin outlined the new model in a post on the Ethereum Research Forum entitled "Explanation of DAICOs". In the exposition, the Russian-Canadian programmer outlines a new model that integrates characteristics of DAOs into ICOs to create a new model he refers to as the "DAICO".
Source: The Merkle
The little-known Indonesian digital payments company KinerjaPay (KPAY) reported another blowout quarter in December with sales that topped the previous 3 month period by a whopping 1,100%!
Revenue and User-Base Growing Parabolically? +1100% in Q3
KinerjaPay is a digital payments platform in Indonesia and South Asia, and the company ha been growing at an astronomical rate in the last year. In the third fiscal quarter of 2017 ended September 30, 2017, the company posted quarterly transactional revenue of $1.76 million, an 1,183% increase over $149K in the second quarter.
User growth is accelerating as the company brings on more partners for digital payments and bill pay capabilities in a region of the world where a fraction of people have a bank account or credit/debit card. The rate at which KinerjaPay is adding customers grew 58% in the 3rd quarter; the company reported 10,962 new users compared to 6,904 new users in the same quarter of last year, demonstrating just how fast they're adding users for a small emerging company.
Asian equity markets on Tuesday found their footing after some initial softness, leaving Hong Kong's benchmark at a record closing high.
The Hang Seng rose 1.8% to 31,904.75, topping the previous high set on Oct. 30, 2007.
Japanese stocks rebounded from Monday's selloff, with a weaker yen helping the country's exporters. The dollar gained 0.2% to ¥110.7200, pushing the Nikkei to finish up 1% at a fresh 26-year high.
Almost a third of funding raised by African startups in 2017 was in the fintech sector as investors bet on consumers turning to more formal financial services in a region where just 17% of the population have banking accounts. Venture funding for African startups jumped by 51% to $195 million in 2017, according to a report from Disrupt Africa.
The success of mobile money technology like M-Pesa in Kenya and across East Africa has long shown the potential for other underserved markets. M-Pesa's success is likely also behind for the increasing presence of mobile networks in the African financial sector and the convergence of the two sectors (pdf page 11).
Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya remained the countries with highest funding raised, consistent with their record from previous years.
Payday loan licences in Alberta have fallen by more than one-quarter, to 165 from 230, and industry officials predict even more payday loan stores will be shuttering their doors this year.
Before then, rules around payday loans in Alberta allowed for the second-highest interest rates in Canada, with lenders being allowed to charge up to $23 for every $100 borrowed, up to a maximum of $1,500. Now, the rate is $15 per $100 — touted to be the lowest in Canada — and borrowers are allowed to repay the the loans in instalments over two months. Lenders are also no longer allowed to penalize customers for paying back loans early and must restrict the number of times a lender can make preauthorized withdrawals.
Author Allen TaylorPosted on January 17, 2018 Categories alternative investment, Artificial Intelligence, Banking, Banks, Better Mortgage, Big Data, blockchain and distributed ledgers, CredtiVest, Crowdcube, cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency excxhanges, Curve, Daily News Digest, debt, energy crowdfunding, Featured, fintech, fintech VC, ICO, Kinerjapay, Laurel Road, Lend Academy, Lendix, M1 Financing, Magilla Loans, marketplace lending, Marketsflow, Mobile payments, moody's, News, NextCapital, open banking, p2p lending, p2p uk, payday lending rule, PSD2, RateSetter, Realty Mentors, Regulation, Reliamax, robo-advice, Robo.cash, short-term loans, SME lending, SoFi Professional Loan Program, student loan refinancing, Student Loans, Swaper, Tipalti, UpLift, Victory Park Capital, Wells Fargo
Friday January 5 2018, Daily News Digest
News Comments Today's main news: Wealthfront gets backing from Tiger Global. Funding Circle partners with Kansas bank. Elevate customers see rise in credit scores. NextCapital raises $30M for digital advice platform. London tops tech funding. HMT Treasury says P2P lending not deposit-taking. Yields lower in Euro zone as MiFID II begins. Today's main analysis: FT Partners' CEO monthly alt lending market […]
Today's main news: Wealthfront gets backing from Tiger Global. Funding Circle partners with Kansas bank. Elevate customers see rise in credit scores. NextCapital raises $30M for digital advice platform. London tops tech funding. HMT Treasury says P2P lending not deposit-taking. Yields lower in Euro zone as MiFID II begins.
Today's main analysis: FT Partners' CEO monthly alt lending market analysis. Why did biz loan growth fall of the cliff?
Today's thought-provoking articles: Business loan growth fell off the cliff. Ron Suber talks about 2018. Country comparisons and deals in tech funding 2017.
Wealthfront snags backing of Tiger Global. AT: "A huge win for both companies. Congatulations."
FT Partners' CEO monthly alternative lending market analysis. AT: "FT Partners advised the recent GreenSky deal that led to that company overtaking SoFi as the most valued online lender."
Why did business loan growth fall in 2017? AT: "Maybe businesses are profitable without loans. If cash reserves are growing, they may be managing their businesses on those. On the other hand, business owners could be worried about an economic downturn that could crush their businesses, especially if they are in debt. A third option may be the uncertainty caused by a Trump Administration that is unpredictable."
Ron Suber discusses alternative lending in 2018. AT: "Excellent insight. Prosper, for instance, is making money despite lower profits. They're likely not the only ones, and Suber says it is because the industry has grown up."
Elevate says customers have seen a rise in credit scores.
NextCapital raises $30M for digital financial advice platform. AT: "Congratulations. As a result, we may see a surge in legacy advice firms offering a robo or hybrid service. Increased competition can only improve services and help the industry."
FSOC report highlights marketplace lending.
Can blockchain tech revive P2P lending?
How the unbanked and underbanked differ.
BankMobile's plan to expand. AT: "But when will they expand to businesses?"
Banks offer student loan pay downs to attract millennials for employment.
How Citizens Bank is redesigning its branches. AT: "Bank branches of the future will likely be more like the barber shops of the past."
Banks use behavioral economics to woo customers.
The battle over credit scoring for mortgages. AT: "There is more than enough room for traditional credit scoring and alternative credit scoring models like VantageScore."
Envestnet finalizes FolioDynamix acquisition.
PropertyMetrics offers online proformas for real estate investors.
One stock newsletter writer recommends LendingClub.
New York to get an online lending task force.
Chippewa Cree Tribe, BEH Gaming settle lawsuit.
LendingTree chooses Portland ad agency.
3 financing mistakes to avoid in growing a business.
Infographic: How to keep a good credit score.
London topped list of tech funding hubs in 2017.
Comparison of European countries on tech funding.
P2P lending not deposit-taking, says treasury.
How angel investors support startups.
Over half low-income families use expensive credit to buy household appliances.
Babb hires Paul Johnson as CIO.
Yields edge lower as MiFID II starts.
P2P platforms support pan-EU licenses.
Funding Circle partners with Kansas bank. AT: "This is the online lender's first partnership with a U.S. bank. I sense more to come."
Former Ripple CEO now one of the world's richest billionaires.
Publisher of Times of India invests in fintech lender FinREQ.
EarlySalary raises $15.7M.
Try these asset class investments.
Orix leverages AI, big data for online lending.
An investing startup that grew by $ 100 million in a single day just got some big name backing (Business Insider), Rated: AAA
FT Partners' CEO Monthly Alternative Lending Market Analysis (FT Partners), Rated: AAA
Business-Loan Growth Fell Off a Cliff in 2017 and No One Can Figure Out Why (WSJ), Rated: AAA
Looking at 2018: A Discussion with Ron Suber (Crowdfund Insider), Rated: AAA
ELEVATE ANNOUNCES BOOST IN CUSTOMER FINANCIAL HEALTH (BusinessWire), Rated: AAA
NextCapital Raises $ 30M for its Digital Financial Advice Platform (ChicagoINNO), Rated: AAA
FSOC Annual Report on Financial Stability Highlights Marketplace Lending (Lend Academy), Rated: A
Can blockchain technology revive peer-to-peer lending? (American Banker), Rated: A
Unbanked vs. Underbanked: Who they are and how they differ (MicroBilt), Rated: A
'We don't need to stay in the student market': How BankMobile wants to grow its offering and replicate its model (Tearsheet), Rated: A
Banks compete for tech talent by helping on student loans (American Banker), Rated: A
Inside Citizens Bank's branch redesign strategy (Tearsheet), Rated: A
How banks use behavioral economics to win over customers (American Banker), Rated: A
A Fight Over the Credit Score Lenders Use for Your Mortgage (WWJ), Rated: A
Envestnet Finalizes Acquisition of FolioDynamix for $ 195 Million (Finovate), Rated: A
PropertyMetrics helps real estate investors create more accurate proformas (Realty Biz), Rated: A
10 favorite stocks for 2018 from top-ranked stock newsletter writers (MarketWatch), Rated: A
An Online Lending Task Force is Coming to New York (deBanked), Rated: A
Chippewa Cree Tribe Settles BEH Gaming Ltd Lawsuit (PRWeb), Rated: B
Portland ad agency lands $ 126M LendingTree account (Biz Journals), Rated: B
Growing your business? These 3 financing mistakes can cost you big (News-Journal), Rated: B
3 Behaviors To Keep Credit in Good Standing (MicroBilt), Rated: B
London was top destination for tech funding in 2017 (Reuters), Rated: AAA
London's tech scene pulls in record £2.5bn in 2017 venture capital bonanza (City A.M.), Rated: AAA
Treasury clarifies whether P2P lending constitutes deposit-taking (AltFi), Rated: AAA
How angel investors support UK start-ups (Growth Business), Rated: A
High numbers using expensive credit to buy basic household appliances (Ekklesia), Rated: A
Blockchain-based banking startup Babb names Paul Johnson as CIO (Finextra), Rated: B
Euro zone yields edge lower as MiFID II kicks in (Reuters), Rated: AAA
P2P platform bosses offer cautious support for pan-EU licences (AltFi), Rated: A
Online lender Funding Circle inks partnership with Kansas bank (American Banker), Rated: AAA
This Cryptocurrency Inventor Has Suddenly Become One of the World's Richest Men (Money), Rated: A
BCCL invests in fintech company FinREQ in an ads-for-equity deal (Medianama), Rated: AAA
Online lending platform EarlySalary raises $ 15.7 mn in Series B round (VC Circle), Rated: A
Invest smart with these asset class investment options (ANI), Rated: B
Commencement of Online Lending Service for Small Businesses That Leverages Accounting Big Data and AI Technology (Orix), Rated: A
Wealthfront, a robo-adviser with more than $9 billion under its management, announced Thursday that Tiger Global, the New York investment firm, would lead a $75 million fundraising round.
Wealthfront plans to use the new capital to enhance its Path platform, which allows users to view all of their financial accounts.
"Path's appeal to young people propelled our growth such that people under 45 now represent 85% of our clients," Wealthfront cofounder Andy Rachleff said in a statement.
As FT Partners wraps up 2017 and looks forward to 2018, we are extremely proud of our accomplishments. Celebrating over 16 years in business, we executed a record number of deals, significantly expanded our team, continued our global expansion and won a number of industry awards during the past twelve months. We are confident that 2018 will be another successful year for the Firm and we are incredibly thankful to our clients and friends across the industry.
In case you missed it, we recently published our latest in-depth, 200+ page industry report: "
Source: FT Partners
Business-loan growth fell to its lowest levels since the aftermath of the financial crisis in the final weeks of 2017, a puzzling development that could weigh on bank earnings later this month.
Bank loans to companies grew 1.1% from a year earlier as of Dec. 20, up slightly from a 0.8% rate the prior week, according to Federal Reserve data. That Dec. 13 level was the lowest since spring 2011, when banks were just starting to lend to companies again after the financial crisis.
The readings likely cement 2017 as the worst year for this type of lending in recent history. The average weekly rate of business-loan growth was 2.7% for 2017 through Dec. 20, compared with 9.3% in 2016 and double-digit growth in the two years before that.
"[People] from the banking industry from the tech industry. We have grown up," said Suber. "We had some people that were great from the early days but were not good for long term growth. There has bee a major turnover in the leadership at many of these companies. My call is that companies are focusing on cash flow, profitability and EBITDA for the first time. Earnings on GAAP basis … I think that is great for the industry. You are seeing companies generate cash. [In the past] Prosper did $400 million in month and it lost money. Now it is doing, say $200 million a month and it is making money. They are being run to be profitable businesses. That is the takeaway from 2017."
Suber says that today, Prosper makes money every quarter. They have $100 million on the balance sheet and it gets higher every month.
"We are seeing lots of money coming in from Asia to buy loans now. More than ever," added Suber.
LendingClub, a reporting company, has had a tough two years as its stock has tanked while Wall Street looked elsewhere for growth.
More than 140,000 customers of Elevate's RISE product have seen an improvement in their credit scores. Additionally, more than 35,000 RISE customers are now eligible to receive at least a 50 percent reduction in their APR and more than 13,000 customers are eligible to receive RISE's lowest rate.
More than 160 million Americans are either non-prime or "credit invisibles," without any credit score. These customers account for almost two-thirds of the U.S. population, yet are significantly underserved by the traditional financial industry.
RISE loans are originally priced to risk. Customers are eligible to receive 50 percent off of their rate on subsequent loans after 24 months of payments, eventually achieving a further reduction to 36 percent. Today, more than 35,000 customers have received or are eligible to receive a 50 percent rate reduction and more than 13,000 customers are eligible for an APR of 36 percent.
Elevate worked with a major credit bureau to which it reports, gathering anonymized data on RISE customers. Elevate reviewed credit scores of customers from the customer acquisition point up to two quarters after loan completion.
The number of customers who have reached the necessary number of payments to receive a rate reduction was calculated by tabulating the number of accounts at the number of payments necessary.
24 months of payments are required to receive 50 percent off of the customer's original APR
36 months of payments are required to reach 36 percent
NextCapital officially announced Thursday that it has raised $30 million in new funding to grow its enterprise digital advice platform.
The Series C round brings the company's total funding to more than $52 million. The round was led by Oak HC/FT, and included additional investments by Manulife Financial, Transamerica Ventures, Vermont Seed Capital Fund and Route 66 Ventures.
Last month the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) released their annual report. This 165-page report highlights potential risks to our financial system by looking at new developments and providing recommendations to improve financial stability.
Section 4.14 of this year's report deals with new financial products and there is an entire section on marketplace lending. Here is their conclusion about our space:
Although marketplace lending has the potential to reduce costs and expand access to credit, the extent to which these benefits have been realized thus far is unclear. Furthermore, the marketplace lending model has not been tested through a full credit cycle. There are risks that misalignment of incentives could exist on these platforms.
The original premise of online peer-to-peer lending platforms was simple and democratic: A single mom from Kalamazoo, Mich., could post her story explaining why she needed $5,000 to pay off her credit card, and a retired electrician in Illinois could read it, decide to fund her loan and receive interest far exceeding what he could get on his savings account.
LendingClub and others that proffered this people-helping-people model quickly found they needed to make changes.
Slightly more than two-thirds of households in America frequently make use of traditional banking services, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But that leaves 33 percent of people in the U.S. who don't, a significant percentage by any measure.
As the title implies, unbanked Americans are those who don't make use of any banking services whatsoever. This includes debit cards and checking accounts, as well as savings accounts. In 2015 – the most recent year for which data is available – the unbanked represented 7 percent of U.S. households, translating to approximately 23 million individuals, including children, the FDIC reported. The percentage of unbanked households in the U.S. is down slightly from 2013, when it was 7.7 percent.
Families have a plethora of rationales for why they opt to go without banking services, but it's usually due to what they do not have in terms of savings. Nearly 57 percent of unbanked households cite this as their prime reason, according to the FDIC report.
Around 20 percent of Americans are underbanked, according to the FDIC, which means they have either a checking or savings account, though rarely both. Households are also usually given the underbanked distinction if they've used alternative financing options during the previous year, such as money orders or rent-to-own services. Around 67 million Americans are underbanked, or the equivalent of 24.5 million households, based on 2015 figures from the most up to date FDIC survey.
As far as demographics are concerned, millennials are among the most likely to be underbanked, with 31 percent of them under the age of 24, according to federal figures.
BankMobile, the digital-only bank that offers checking accounts to students, wants to start offering them credit.
The three-year-old Customers Bank subsidiary launched a personal loan product for its customers at the end of December, but that was just the first of a suite of credit products the bank plans to roll out this year as part of its "customer-for-life" strategy, according to Luvleen Sidhu, president and chief strategy officer.
BankMobile has 1.8 million customers to date and has opened about 300,000 new accounts each year in the student demographic through its university partnerships.
Why are you expanding into credit now?
We're just looking at our demographic. Many in our current customer base are living paycheck to paycheck — that's why personal loans make sense.
How do you plan to expand your products after the personal loan?
We have a lot of products to introduce on the credit side: credit cards in the second quarter, student refinancing in the second quarter, auto loans and home equity by the second half of next year.
You're partnering with Upstart on credit products. What are the advantages of that approach?
In the longterm you could say it's more expensive to partner but those costs outweigh the fact that we get to market much faster.
How has competition changed since BankMobile launched?
It's accelerated. Challenger banks and Neobanks like Moven, GoBank, Simple and Varo continue to flourish and grow. Digital banks like Ally, USAA and Captial One 360 have really done a push in 2017 attracting millennials, tweaking their product, tone, messaging, branding to make sure they start penetrating that segment. Traditional banks are finally realizing the branch based customer acquisition model is not sufficient.
Banks spend not only a lot of time thinking about how to attract millennial customers, but also how to get millennials to work for them.
Though banks might be hard-pressed to offer similar wages — average starting salaries at Uber, Pinterest, and Airbnb are all over $220,000, according to Paysa — they can offer something most tech companies don't: a student loan repayment benefit plan.
Banking giants like Citi and Capital One with much more money and resources at hand have been making branches look more like lounges, coffee shops or museums as they figure out what to do with them with less foot traffic, but in 2018, smaller institutions could start to make a move on their plans.
The Providence, Rhode Island bank is transforming its branches into digitally-connected community centers, Johnson said.
Citizens currently has 1,200 branches, and the bank is in the second year of a 10-year plan to reduce its branch footprint as lease expiries take effect. It's replacing paper pamphlets with digital tools, like a digital retirement checkup platform customers can use while meeting with bankers. The bank can also project digital content onto the walls of a meeting room — a nod to the digital-first habits of some younger customers. Citizens is on an ambitious track to reduce its retail footprint by as much as 50 percent — a "do more with less" approach that over the long term that will save occupancy costs, CEO Bruce Van Saun said in an earnings call last year.
When a major international bank was looking to improve the response rates for its credit card mailers in 2017, rather than changing the graphics or upgrading the paper stock, it turned to a firm that could offer guidance on how consumers make decisions.
It was trying to tap into the insights of behavioral economics, a discipline that uses psychological observations about human behavior to analyze and predict how people will act.
Banks and rival lenders are butting heads over the credit scores used to decide millions of mortgage requests by U.S. home buyers.
Now, a federal agency is weighing whether to step into the fight, which revolves around a longtime requirement for lenders who sell mortgages to Fannie Mae FNMA -3.17% and Freddie Mac FMCC -3.31%to gauge most borrowers using FICO scores. The Federal Housing Finance Agency's ultimate decision could have wide-reaching ramifications for the mortgage market and home buyers across the U.S.
Many nonbank lenders, which in some recent quarters have accounted for more than half of the mortgage dollars issued in the U.S., want the ability to use a credit score provided by a company owned by credit-reporting firms Equifax Inc., EFX +0.00% Experian EXPGY 0.23% PLC and TransUnion . TRU 0.80% These lenders argue the alternative score would open the mortgage market to a greater number of people and lead to more mortgage approvals, helping to boost home sales and the economy.
That is where VantageScore Solutions LLC, the scoring firm that Experian, Equifax and TransUnion launched in 2006, says it can step in.
The company says it can assign a credit score to about 30 million more consumers than FICO. Roughly 7.6 million of those consumers would potentially be eligible for a Fannie or Freddie mortgage, VantageScore says.
Wealth management intelligence solutions company Envestnet has finalized its acquisition of Actua Corp's FolioDynamix, a wealth tech solutions company, this week.
With that in mind, a company called PropertyMetrics has built a web based platform that's designed to help investors come up with a proforma that includes evaluation and analysis. With PropertyMetric's software it's possible to analyze any property in minutes, from any device. This means investors can quickly generate a quick cash flow proforma, perform a cash flow analysis and generate PDF reports from anywhere, in a matter of minutes.
Michael Brush, Brush Up on Stocks
I also recently suggested Lending Club Corp. LC, +0.98% in part because of the huge buying by Chinese technology and internet expert Tianqiao Chen, who founded the online gaming company Shanda Interactive Entertainment years ago while he was in his 20s.
He owns around 20% of Lending Club, an online peer-to-peer lending platform. LendingClub recently tightened its lending standards, which hurt loan growth, so the company missed earnings estimates and guided down. But it still expects 15%-20% annual revenue growth over the next few years. This seems plausible given how many people with OK credit would like to refinance their credit card debt with loans. Lending Club estimates $300 billion to $350 billion in credit card debt could potentially be refinanced in this way.
An online lending task force DFS study will be coming soon to New York, according to legislative records.
Plain Green, LLC, the online resource for the short-term financial needs of underbanked and subprime consumers, today announces a successful settlement with BEH Gaming Ltd related to loans to the Chippewa Cree Tribe and Chippewa Cree Tribe Development Corporation. Plain Green's settlement and payment of the debt to BEH releases the Chippewa Cree Tribe and Chippewa Cree Tribe Development Corporation from all liability. The settlement amount is under seal of court order.
The agreement settles a lawsuit filed by Florida-based BEH Gaming Ltd in 2014 (Case # DV-14-142 in the 12th Judicial District Court in Hill County, Montana) to repay loans to expand Northern Winz Hotel and Casino.
Advertising agency R2C inked a deal late last month to become the new media partner for LendingTree Inc.
LendingTree is an online loan marketplace for financial needs like auto loans, small business loans and credit cards headquartered in Charlotte, N.C. AdWeek reports that the company had a media budget of $126.5 million in 2016, and spent nearly $61 million during the first half of 2017, though R2C won't manage LendingTree's entire media budget.
1. Not understanding the true cost of your loan
When shopping for a business loan, it's easy to become overwhelmed by fast-talking salespeople, endless strings of acronyms and confusing terms. If it's unclear how much you'll really pay for financing, that's a good sign you should walk away, Hodges cautions.
2. Getting trapped in daily or weekly repayment cycles
Term loans are often the better option, Hodges says. They allow businesses to borrow a set amount of money for a specific purpose, like hiring new staff or stocking up on inventory. The funds are then paid back over a set amount of time, with consistent monthly payments and no surprise fees.
3. Not knowing what you deserve
After seeing countless small businesses get stuck with credit products they couldn't afford or understand, a coalition of small business advocates, lenders and online credit marketplaces came together to launch the Small Business Borrowers' Bill of Rights. As the first-ever gold standard for responsible business lending, the Bill of Rights outlines the rights and safeguards that small businesses should expect from finance providers.
Source: MicroBilt
London was the top city in Europe for technology investment last year, with more funding going into companies in the British capital than into firms based in Paris, Berlin and the next seven cities combined, data showed on Friday.
Tech firms in London attracted 2.45 billion pounds ($3.3 billion) in venture capital funding in 2017, about 80 percent of the 2.99 billion pounds invested in Britain as a whole, according to data compiled by funding database PitchBook for London & Partners.
Fintech, or financial technology, was the most popular segment for investors, attracting a record 1.34 billion pounds in venture capital, the data showed, led by major rounds for TransferWise, Funding Circle and Monzo.
London's tech venture capital investment reached another all-time high in 2017 as firms raked in four times more cash than Paris, the nearest European rival.
Softbank's $502m (£392m) investment in game development platform Improbable was the biggest single investment during the year, but it was London's burgeoning fintech firms which led the way with a record haul of investments.
European cityLondon Total funding raised (£)
European cityParis Total funding raised (£)
European cityBerlin Total funding raised (£)
European cityStockholm Total funding raised (£)
European cityMadrid Total funding raised (£)
European cityAmsterdam Total funding raised (£)
European cityDublin Total funding raised (£)
European cityHelsinki Total funding raised (£)
European cityCopenhagen Total funding raised (£)
European cityLisbon Total funding raised (£)
HMT Treasury has passed an order confirming that straight-forward peer-to-peer lending does not constitute deposit-taking.
The order relates to the now-infamous "Dear CEO" letter, sent in March 2017, in which the FCA effectively ordered P2P platforms to cease and desist with all wholesale lending activities. The rationale was that a business borrowing money in order to lend that money on constitutes a form of deposit-taking. This was deemed illegal, per article 5, paragraph 1 of the regulated activities order.
Investing in start-ups is becoming increasingly popular and accessible in the UK. The attractiveness of that market has come from two main factors: the success of a number UK start-ups built over the past two decades (ASOS, Just Eat, Zoopla, Funding Circle) which are showing the way for many more to come and the supportive policies implemented by the various governments over the same period to encourage investment in ventures.
These schemes have proven to be extremely popular with private investors who every year invest over £1.5 billion into high growth ventures under SEIS and EIS.
So how do you get started with investing in start-ups if you are new to this market?
Your first option is to invest through online equity crowdfunding platforms (ECF) such as Seedrs, Crowdcube and Syndicate Room, which showcase dozens of investment opportunities from start-ups looking to raise equity funding from the public. The advantage of ECF websites is that they are convenient and accessible to anyone with investment tickets starting at £10.
If you consider yourself to be a more sophisticated type of investor looking to build a portfolio of investments with tickets of more than £5,000 per company, then you should probably think about joining an angel syndicate.
A third option to get started is to invest through a start-up fund.
Research found almost 60 per cent of people on a low income turn to more expensive forms of credit to purchase home appliances because they do not have the means to pay up front or access to affordable credit. Seventeen per cent say they used a credit card to make the purchase, 10 per cent used an overdraft and 10 per cent used a store card. More worryingly, significant numbers said that they used high cost credit to buy home appliances, with 13 per cent relying on hire-purchase and eight per cent saying that they used a payday loan.
Blockchain-based banking startup BABB (Bank Account Based Blockchain) has appointed banking technology veteran, Paul Johnson who previously lead one of the UK's leading challenger banks, Aldermore, as CIO to spearhead the development of the world's first decentralised bank.
Germany's 10-year government bond yield fell 2 basis points to 0.44 percent DE10YT=TWEB, off two-month highs hit on Tuesday after weekend comments from the European Central Bank's Benoit Coeure that there was a "reasonable chance" ECB stimulus will not be extended this year.
Most core euro zone bond yields were down 1-4 bps on the day, with the gap between Italian and German 10-year bonds yields tightened to 160 basis points as Italian yields dropped as much as 6 bps to 2.03 percent. IT10YT=TWEB
Ireland meanwhile kicked off its annual funding drive by raising 4 billion euros with a syndicated 10-year bond, covering around a quarter of its issuance target just three days into the year.
"Opt-in passports" are the way forward, says Lendix co-founder Patrick de Nonneville.
The EU Commission is laying the groundwork for a licence that will allow European crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending platforms to operate across the bloc.
"We think it's a great development that will be useful for us," said Patrick de Nonneville, chief operating officer at French marketplace lender Lendix.
Raffael Johnen, CEO and co-founder of leading German marketplace lender auxmoney, offered his thoughts.
"Getting closer to a single digital market will further boost the creation of true European fintech champions."
Funding Circle, an online lender that operates in four countries, is partnering for the first time with a U.S. bank.
On Thursday, the 7-year-old company announced a deal with Intrust Bank in Wichita, Kan., under which it will sell $20 million worth of its small-business loans to the $5 billion-asset institution.
Cryptocurrency has a new king. His name is Chris Larsen, and he's the co-founder and former CEO of Ripple, which created the digital token known as XRP. He's now one of the world's richest billionaires, thanks to XRP's incredible hot streak.
XRP, a cryptocurrency intended for international transactions, has had a meteoric rise this winter. Its value went from $0.25 a coin in mid-December to $3.16 as of Wednesday, according to Coinmarketcap. It's currently the second biggest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin.
Forbes reports that, as a result, Larsen almost instantly became worth $37.3 billion (based on XRP's Monday exchange rate).
Bennett, Coleman & Co Limited (BCCL), the publisher of the Times Of India and the parent of Times Internet, has acquired an undisclosed stake in online loan company FinREQ.
As such, it looks like the investment in FinREQ is an ads-for-equity deal.
FinREQ was founded in 2011 and has tie-ups tie-ups with nationalized, co-operative, foreign, private banks, NBFCs and Housing Finance Companies. The company provides a variety of loans ranging from overdrafts, import & export finance, supply chain financing, loans against property (LAP), loans against share, lease rental discounts and others.
Pune-based Social Worth Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs online lending platform EarlySalary, has raised Rs 100 crore ($15.7 million) in a Series B funding round led by Eight Roads Ventures India, a company statement said.
Fixed Deposits, investment in gold, Real Estate and many other traditional options are losing grounds when trying to woo the new age investors.
A research from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies indicated that nearly three-quarters of millennials are saving for retirement and that we started doing so at an earlier age than previous generations.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending in India currently gives a net return of 18-22 percent to lenders.
ORIX Corporation ("ORIX") and Yayoi Co., Ltd. ("Yayoi") announced today that the ALTOA Online Lending Service, which leverages accounting big data and AI technology, will commence its operation through the jointly established entity, ALTOA, Inc. ("ALTOA").
The ALTOA Online Lending Service is an online lending service that provides small amount, short-term loans for small businesses through a new credit model that leverages the credit know-how of ORIX, the accounting big data of Yayoi, and the AI technology of d.a.t. Inc., who is a partner in this venture.
Author Allen TaylorPosted on January 5, 2018 Categories alternative credit scoring, alternative lending, ALTOA Online Lending Service, Babb, BankMobile, Banks, Blockchain, business financing, business lending, Citizens Bank, Credit, credit scores, credit scoring, cryptocurrency, Daily News Digest, digital advice, EarlySalary, Elevate, Elevate RISE, Envestnet, Featured, FinREQ, FT Partners, Funding Circle, GreenSky, investors, lawsuits, lendingclub, LendingTree, marketplace lending, microbilt, Mifid II, Millennials, mobile banking, mortgage loans, News, NextCapital, online banking, Online Lending, ORIX, p2p lending, p2p uk, Plain Green LLC, PropertyMetrics, Ripple, robo-advice, Ron Suber, startups, unbanked, underbanked, VantageScore, Wealthfront

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


If I were to redo my own wedding, it would be this wedding. And I've been looking forward to this wedding for a LONG time because I am CRAZY about these two people. CRAZY. They are A-MA-ZING. Really really amazing. They are just the most perfect combination of all things….soo much fun, super chill and relaxed, wonderfully thoughtful and kind, soo loving and sweet, unique and UBER cool. What also makes them special is that they wanted a beautiful, intimate wedding…but with the focus of fun, joy and meaningfulness, instead of tons of formality. They got ready together, spent the morning just having such a great time with the people closest to them. For wedding party photos, we hung out at a fantastic bar and just captured them enjoying time together . The connections between everyone was just soo warm and the love that radiated from everyone and everything surrounding this wedding was truly magical. Then there were soo many special moments….their first meeting and gift exchange was PRICELESS! One of the best I've ever seen! For Rachel…it starts with a D and ends with IAMONDS! 😉 Lot of diamonds. WOW. and then just the icing on the cake were here GUCCI SHOES! Yep, you heard me correctly. Diamonds and Gucci in almost the same sentence. Wipe your drool ladies. Then, for Sam…a little back story. They are HUGE Black Crowes fans! Who doesn't love a little She Talks to Angels…but it goes beyond that for them. They are friends with the band (did i mention their cool factor? see what i mean? cause we are all just friends with the members of our favorite bands, right!?) 😉 and Rachel got one of Rich Robinson's official concert GUITARS for Sam. TRUE STORY. Let's just say that he talked about it ALL DAY LONG, roughly every 15 minutes, because he was that excited and just that stunned by the gift. Their gifts were soo thoughtful…and just off the HOOK. or chain. or whatever it is that kids say these days. In short, this wedding was INCREDIBLE. I loved every single minute of it and I LOVE this couple!! Rachel and Sam, I knew it from the minute that I met you that I would be totally smitten with you two and I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have been your photographer and your friend! All my love!! xoxo!
these photos are sick. for reals. sick.
I want to hang with them! Gorgeous couple, gorgeous images.


WEST Ham boss Gianfranco Zola is confident £6m-rated defender Matthew Upson will opt to stay at Upton Park.
The England squad man, 29, wants regular European football to make sure he remains in Fabio Capello's plans.
Upson has been linked with a summer return to Arsenal, but Zola reckons a new deal could scupper that in the next few days.
Next season will begin in July if the Hammers finish in seventh spot as they will be in the qualifiers for the new-look UEFA Cup, the Europa Cup.
And Zola, who is about to pen a new deal himself, believes Upson was right when he claimed the Hammers need more high-profile clashes.
He said: "It doesn't concern me. Actually it motivates me even more.
"If a player like Matty Upson is feeling something like that, then he is pushing everybody in the right direction. I admire people like that.


Synopsis : A tense, claustrophobic and gripping science fiction thriller from the author of The Testimony. When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity's great explorers. But in space, nothing goes according to plan. The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue. But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death ...unless he can do something to stop it.


text: Comedian, actor and best selling author, Jay Mohr has been performing stand-up comedy since he was sixteen years old. With a career that has spanned over three decades, Jay has become an artist that is very difficult to define. Never wanting to rest on his accomplishments, Jay has always pushed himself to be more than just a comic.Jay Mohr is the rarest of entertainers. After 25 films and starring in his own groundbreaking series produced by Joel Silver and the late Ted Demme (Action) he starred in the CBS scripted comedy Gary Unmarried, which was critically acclaimed and was on for two seasons.


Concerto para Moviola, the new CD from Brazilian pianist, composer, and arranger Ricardo Bacelar, puts jazz fusion of the 1970s and 1980s in the spotlight with tunes by Weather Report, Pat Metheny, Yellowjackets, Antonio Carlos Jobim and other greats.
The new recording documents a performance specially produced for the traditional Guaramiranga Jazz and Blues Festival, held annually in Guaramiranga, Brazil, during the renowned Carnival celebration. Recorded at the Via Sul Theatre, Concerto para Moviolashowcases Bacelar's deep fascination with '70s and '80s jazz fusion, focusing on a blend of analog synthesizers, Brazilian music, and acoustic piano.
The result is an excellent mix of classics composed by giants of the international fusion jazz scene, such as "Birdland," by Weather Report keyboardist Joe Zawinul; guitarist Pat Metheny's "So May It Secretly Begin"; and "March Majestic," by Bob Mintzer of the Yellowjackets. Also included are Brazilian music gems such as "Sabiá" (Chico Buarque/Antonio Carlos Jobim), "Palhaço"' (Egberto Gismonti/Geraldo Carneiro), "Água de Beber" (Antonio Carlos Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes), "Setembro" (Ivan Lins/Vitor Martins/Gilson Peranzzetta), and "Nanã" (Moacir Santos/Mario Telles).
"I have taken great care to select music that I really enjoy. I made a record I would like to hear, which would please me and my friends, the ones who are fond of good music," Ricardo Bacelar declares. On Concerto para Moviola, the acoustic pianist and keyboardist is accompanied by guitarist/co-producer Ronaldo Person, drummer Luiz Duarte, bassist Miquéias dos Santos, violinist Marcus Vinicius Cardoso, keyboardist/percussionist Maria Helena Lage, percussionist Hoto Junior, and saxophonist/flutist Márcio Resende.
Concerto para Moviola is Ricardo Bacelar´s second album as a leader. His first CD, In Natura, also available on virtual platforms, consists of previously unreleased original tunes, delivering an intimate exploration of acoustic piano music. Bacelar was part of the band Hanoi Hanoi, which enjoyed wide commercial success in Brazil in the '80s and '90s. Besides his acclaimed musical abilities, Bacelar has a background in legal studies, making him an important figure in discussions in Brazil about copyright and cultural incentives, as well as a strong advocate of music education in schools. His work fighting plagiarism has been an important source of information for all Brazilian universities.
A music student since his youth, Ricardo Bacelar defines his new release as "more joyful, different from the previous one, which was introspective." Concerto para Moviola documents the inspired musicians' presentation, their strong approach to unusual themes, and their style of re-creating in a live performance fresh-sounding takes on classic popular fusion songs and standards, showcasing the characteristic freedom of jazz.
In addition to the CD, DVD and vinyl, Concerto para Moviola is also available through stores and streaming services.
Cordillera (Ricardo Bacelar): A lively, warm-up tune.
Birdland (Joe Zawinul): A classic tune from the American band Weather Report, a standout ensemble on the jazz fusion scene. "Birdland," a composition Bacelar heard a lot as a teen, is named after a New York jazz club where Weather Report keyboardist Zawinul (who also played with Miles Davis) was inspired by Charlie Parker's solos. Weather Report included bassist Jaco Pastorius, considered one of the world's best ever.
Killer Joe (Benny Golson): A contemporary jazz standard. Bacelar favors Quincy Jones's arrangement featuring brass, a lot of swing, and a pop beat.
So May it Secretely Begin (Pat Metheny): Bacelar is a fan of guitarist/composer Pat Metheny, and has been an avid listener for many years. Bacelar chose this song because it showcases Metheny's well-structured melodies.
The Windmills of Your Mind (Michel Legrand): A modern arrangement of this popular tune gives it a bit more of swing.
Senor Blues (Horace Silver): There's an AfroJazz feel and lots of percussion on this version of a jazz standard from the '50s.
Enquanto isso, chove... (Ricardo Bacelar): Bacelar composed this song a few years ago, and dedicated it to his father, who is also a pianist.
Sabiá (Chico Buarque/ Tom Jobim): É uma bela composição. Um primor de harmonia e caminhos melódicos surpreendentes.
Palhaço (Egberto Gismonti/ Geraldo Carneiro): A well-known song by Gismonti, a Brazilian composer Bacelar greatly admires. "I consider Egberto Gismonti a musical genius and whenever possible, I play one of his songs. We arranged as a baião at the end," Bacelar explains.
Apartheid Blues (Ricardo Bacelar): Another Bacelar composition, which was originally recorded with the singer/guitarist Frejat, from the Brazilian band Barão Vermelho, playing the guitar solo.
Setembro (Ivan Lins/Vitor Martins/Gilson Peranzzetta): A piece that highlights Ivan Lins's harmonic skill; Bacelar recorded it at a faster tempo than the original.
Água de Beber (Tom Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes): Bacelar cites this piece as a "jewel of Brazilian music".
Nanã (Moacir Santos): Moacir Santos was a great arranger and a maestro of Brazilian composition. "Nanã" features lots of percussion.
The Groove (Brian Culbertson/Larry Dunn): Here, the band "mixes the spices" with a funk and afoxé fusion.
Blue Miles (Chick Corea): Pianist and composer Chick Corea "greatly inspired" Bacelar: "He influenced me a lot in my teens and in my way of playing. A great master who is still active in music.".
Ricardo Bacelar "Concerto Para Moviola (Ao Vivo) "


text:
An In-Depth Look Inside The Business Of Video Games
Phil Fish reacts to Microsoft possibly removing patch fees
Maxwell Roahrig
Outspoken indie developer Phil Fish, creator of Fez, responded to rumors of Microsoft possibly removing fees for releasing game patches. Taking to Twitter, Phil responded to the rumor with nothing but contempt for his former publisher.
While the rumor of getting rid of fees for developers to patch and fix their own games going away is unquestionably a good thing, Microsoft's still not the friendliest of publishers to indies. And Phil isn't the only one. Team Meat, the developers of the superb Super Meat Boy ran into similar circumstances when it came time to get their game out to the masses, as depicted in the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. Phil also makes and excellent point with self-publishing; Microsoft just won't allow it on their Xbox One.
Microsoft has made strides recently to appeal to consumers with their Xbox One by doing away with draconian DRM policies. Let's hope they can do something to entice indie developers.
Max was born at the tender young age of zero in a town noted for its horses and baseball bats. He enjoys giraffes, puppies, Robocop, oft forgotten movies of the 90's, British comedy, and bicycling.
Stick Skills
Copyright © 2019 StickSkills.com


text:
Department of Computer Science & Mathematics
Samer Habre
Dr. Samer Habre is an associate professor of mathematics and assistant dean in the School of Arts and Sciences.
He joined LAU in 1992. In 1998, he received a one-year Fulbright Scholarship grant that he spent at Cornell University in New York. In the fall of 2005, he was a visiting scholar at California Polytechnic State University.
Dr. Habre has numerous publications in various areas of pure mathematics and has published lately in the area of linear iterative systems and Burau representations. He also publishes papers on the teaching of mathematics at the college level, and his primary focus is on the role of visualization and writing in the teaching of mathematics. He is the editor of a book entitled Enhancing Mathematics Understanding through Visualization: The Role of Dynamical Software, published by IGI Global in 2013 (available here).
Students' Challenges with Polar Functions: Covariational Reasoning and Plotting in the Polar Coordinate System; published in the International Journal of Mathematics Education in Science and Technology (iJMEST), a Taylor and Francis publication, Vol. 48(1), 2017, pp. 48-66.
Effects of Web-Based Homework on Students' Performance in Freshman Calculus at an American College in Lebanon; published in a special issue of the Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, July 2015, pp. 220-229.
Central finite volume schemes on nonuniform grids and applications. Paper co-authored with Dr. Rony and Dr. Dia Zeidan; published in Applied Mathematics and Computation, Vol. 262, 2015, pp. 15-30.
Spin Representations with Negative Indices. Paper co-authored with Dr. Mohammad Abdul Rahim and Madeline Al-Tahan; published in Tamkang Journal of Mathematics, Vol 45(4), 2014, pp. 367-374.
Multi-Parameter Burau Representations. Paper co-authored with Mohammad Abdulrahim and Madeline Al Tahan; Published in Tamkang Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 44(1), 2013, pp. 91-98
Dynamical Mathematical Software: Tools for Learning and Research. Book Chapter published in the book: Enhancing Mathematics Understanding through Visualization: The Role of Dynamical Software; IGI Global, pp. 70-88. Available here.
String Art and Linear Iterative Systems. Book Chapter published in the book: Enhancing Mathematics Understanding through Visualization: The Role of Dynamical Software; IGI Global, pp. 212-221. Available here.
Improving Understanding in Ordinary Differential Equations through Writing in a Dynamical Environment. Published in Teaching Mathematics and its Applications, Vol. 31(3), 2012, pp.153-166. (doi:10.1093/teamat/hrs007)
GCD Matrices Defined on GCD-Closed Sets in Principal Ideal Domains. Paper co-authored with A.N. El-Kassar. Published in the International Journal of Applied Mathematics, Vol. 24 (4), 2010, pp. 591-598.
Multiple Representations and the Understanding of Taylor Polynomials. Published in PRIMUS (Problems, Resources, and Issues of Mathematics Undergraduate Studies), Vol. 19 (2), pp. 417-432, 2009.
Borderline Behavior of 2x2 Linear Iterative Systems. Paper co-authored with Professor Jean-Marie McDill of California Polytechnic State University; published in the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2008.
Prospective Mathematics' Teachers View on the Role of Technology in Mathematics Education; paper co-authored with Dr. Todd Grundmeier, and published in Issues in the Undergraduate Mathematics Preparation of School Teachers: The Journal, Vol. 3, 2007.
Students' Conceptual Understanding of a Function and its Derivative in an Experimental Calculus Course; published in the Journal of Mathematical Behavior, an Elsevier publication, Vol. 25(1), 2006, pp. 57-72.
Investigating Students' Approval of a Geometric Approach to Differential Equations and Their Solutions. Published in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (iJMEST), Vol.34, No. 5, 2003, pp. 651-66
The Convergence of an Euler Approximation of an Initial Value Problem Is Not Always Obvious. Published in the American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 108, No. 4, 2001, pp. 326 - 335.
PhD in Mathematics, 1991, Syracuse University, US.
MS in Mathematics, 1986, Syracuse University, US.
BS in Mathematics, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Assistant Dean, School of Arts and Sciences
Office: Nicol 522B
shabre@lau.edu.lb


ECB ending glut of money?
The European Central Bank has announced that it won't put any more money into its bond-buying programme starting January. While some commentators believe the decision is dangerous in view of the current economic situation, others criticise the bank for not stepping harder on the monetary brake.


Less than six months into his job as Abilene marshal, pistoleer Wild Bill bested a trigger-happy gambler but accidentally killed a friend in a shootout that changed Hickok's life.
The saloon where Jack McCall assassinated Wild Bill Hickok is clearly visible in this photograph, taken a year or two after Hickok's demise and a year before a devastating fire wiped out much of the Black Hills gold-mining town.
He was the illegitimate son of a Virginia aristocrat, she the daughter of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Their alliance helped propel America's Manifest Destiny.
These rugged, swift dogs, often referred to as staghounds, ran off four-legged frontier predators and pursued prey for the likes of hunter George Armstrong Custer.
Attacked in October 1838 by Kickapoo warriors while surveying land in what is now southwest Navarro County, Texas, desperate workingmen set aside the tools of their trade and picked up their rifles.
News about Western awards and the Hickok-Obama connection. Author Sally Denton's Top Ten Mysteries and Unknown Histories of the West. Plus, West Words and Famous Last Words.
The recipient of two Western Heritage Awards, Sally Denton discusses her work, particularly the subject of her latest book—19th-century power couple John and Jessie Frémont, whose politics and love entwined with Western expansion.
Celebrated cowboy artist Charlie Russell rides a ferryboat in a rarely seen 1903 photo.
Ranch hand John Hancock committed a depraved double murder in the Nevada desert. A lone woman witness was his eventual undoing.
Doc Holliday wasn't the only tuberculosis sufferer to head to Colorado for his health. In fact, more people trekked to the Centennial State in search of a "cure" than in search of gold.
Coffee kings James Athearn Folger and John Arbuckle Jr. helped keep countless cowboys and miners awake, if not perky.
Unlike most mining towns in the 19th-century West, Elkhorn, Montana Territory, boasted a high proportion of married miners.
The U.S. Cavalry rides again on the frontier at Tucson's Museum of the Horse Soldier.
Wild Bill Hickok was proficient with a wide range of six-shooters, but the Colt Navy was his favorite—he wore a pair of them.
In his Texas Trail to Rail Trail, San Antonio artist Donald Yena tells the story of Longhorns, drovers, railroad men and a curious prairie dog or two.
Must-read books and must-see movies about Wild Bill Hickok, widely considered the top pistoleer in the frontier West. Plus a review of a new biography of Sitting Bull and many other reviews in brief.
Pat Garrett's five-star badge went for $115,000.
Discussion: James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok is often considered the most accomplished 19th-century Western shootist. Hickok is known to have killed seven men in six gunfights, and his reputation for fearlessness and proficiency with six-shooters surely scared off countless others. But was Wild Bill a more dangerous foe than such noted gunmen as John Wesley Hardin, Clay Allison, "Killin' Jim" Miller, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Ben Thompson and Harvey Logan? Share your opinions in our forums.
Western Gambling: Acclaimed "gunfighters and lawmen" author Bob DeArment writes about the high-rollers who made gambling a respectable profession in the Wild West.
More Wild Bill: Hickok looked like a frontier dandy, with his long hair and fancy duds, and indeed he impressed more than a few frontier ladies, but the twin Colt Navies he wore weren't just for show.


The increasing amount of information available online has led to the development of technologies that help to deal with it. One of them is Interactive Question Answering (IQA), a research field that has emerged at the intersection of question answering and dialogue systems, and which allows users to find the answers to questions in an interactive way. During the answering process, the automatic system can initiate a dialogue with the user in order to clarify missing or ambiguous information, or suggest further topics for discussion. This chapter presents the state-of-the-art in the field of interactive question answering. Given that IQA inherits a lot of features from dialogue systems and question answering, these fields are also briefly presented. Analysis of the existing systems reveals that in general IQA systems rely on a scaled-down version of a dialogue system, sometimes built on top of question answering systems. Evaluation of IQA is also discussed, showing that it combines evaluation techniques from question answering and dialogue systems.
A computational device or agent that (a) engages in interaction with other human and/or computer participant(s); (b) uses human language in some form such as speech, text, or sign; and (c) typically engages in such interaction across multiple turns or sentences (http://www.jods.org/).
This definition highlights several important aspects of such systems. A dialogue system always has a user, who interacts with the system for a specific goal such as completing some tasks. The interaction involves a conversation in human language between two or more participants and can take several turns. The fact that human language is used in the interaction differentiates the field from other fields such as database access using computer languages (such as SQL) or interaction between software agents that communicate using XML or some other standard computer formats.


The Amphibious Freemasons Lodge in Wimborne have showed their commitment to the care of the wider community by supporting a local charity, The Greenwood Club with a donation of £510.
The Greenwood Club is part of the Dorset Area for Outstanding Natural Beauty project 'Stepping into Nature'. They aim to provide positive shared experiences and memories for those living with dementia and their amazing carers. The members learn green woodworking skills, rural crafts and cooking outdoors in relaxing woodland surroundings.
Amphibious Lodge Charity Steward, Stew McKell met with the Club, at their site in the woods of Holton Lee, he spent some time with the group, then presented the cheque to Club volunteer Jill Hooper. He was asked by several of the carers how the monies were raised and he explained how Freemasons across Dorset raise money to help support local charities.


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Herman Helling of Herman van der Helling is de in het Nederlands verbasterde naam van Hermann von Heylingen. Helling was gouverneur van Haarlem en een kolonel in Staatse dienst.

Biografie
Herman van Heylingen kwam uit het lutherse Saksen. Helling genoot sinds 1573 het onbepaald vertrouwen van de prins van Oranje waarmee hij ook correspondeerde. In 1577 bezette hij de schans te Sparendam gelegen tussen Haarlem en Amsterdam, waardoor Amsterdam afgeneden raakte van Haarlem. Hij maakte geschiedenis met zijn mislukte aanslag op Amsterdam (1577) waar hij stierf op 23 november. Hij was gehuwd met Johanna van der Lawick.

Bronnen
 De correspondentie van Willem van Oranje op: historici.nl
Jacobus Kok, Jan Fokke, Vaderlandsch woordenboek blz. 524

Dirk Schrevel, Harlemias, of eerste stichting der stad Haarlem: Vermeerdert met historische aantekeningen tot den jaare 1750 blz 339

Geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Geschiedenis van Haarlem
Staats militair in de Tachtigjarige Oorlog
Geuzen
Persoon in de Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw
16e-eeuws militair

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
The parent's guide to a liberal ... education; containing a selection of ...
By Robert Simson (master of Colebrooke house acad, Islington.)
miles per second, from the sun and other luminous bodies; according to others, the phænomena are explained by supposing a series of vibrations excited in an elastic medium diffused through all space. What is this supposed medium called? Æther. How is colour accounted for according to the latter theory? By the different degrees of rapidity with which the æther vibrates. How many vibrations in a second of time pro duces in our minds the sensation of red? Four hundred and fifty eight billions. Can philosophers really count so many vibrations? They tell us very gravely that though they cannot count them, they can by calculation determine their number. What do you understand by the refraction of light? When light passes from air into water, glass, or other transparent medium, it is bent from its rectilineal course, and this is called the refraction of light. When light falls obliquely on a polished surface, what is the law of reflection? It makes the angle of incidence equal to the angle of reflection. On what principles are telescopes constructed? Reflecting telescopes are constructed on the law of reflection, and refracting telescopes on that of refraction. What parts of the eye are principally concerned in vision? The cornea, the crystalline lens, and retina. What are the uses of the cornea and crystalline lens? To collect the rays of light into a point.
ELECTRICITY.
If a piece of amber be rubbed against cloth, what property does it acquire? The property of attracting light bodies, such as bits of straw, paper, and feathers. Why are the phænomena of attraction and repulsion called electrical? From electron, the Greek name for
amber. Into how many classes are bodies divided? Into good and bad conductors of electricity. Name the best conductors. Metals and most liquids, except oils. Name the worst conductors. Silk, glass, wax, and all resinous substances. Is the electric fluid simple or compound? According to Dr. Franklin simple, and others compound. If you suppose it simple, when is a body said to be electrified positively? When it has received more than its natural share of electricity. When is it electrified negatively? When a part of its natural share of electricity has been taken away. According to the latter theory, when is a body said to be electrified positively? When that portion of the electric fluid called negative or resinous has been removed. When is a body electrified negatively? When its positive or vitreous electricity has been removed. When do two bodies attract each other? When they are differently electrified. When do they repel each other? When they are similarly electrified. Who was the first person that found lightning and electricity to be the same? Dr. Franklin, by means of a kite raised to a great height. How would you prove them to be identical? Because they produce the same effects; as, for example, giving the shock, melting metals, and setting fire to inflammable substances. What do you understand by zig-zag lightning? That which strikes between a cloud and the earth in a zig-zag form. What is sheet lightning? That which strikes from one cloud to another. Which is the most dangerous? Zig-zag lightning. What ought you to do if in the country in a thunder storm? Avoid trees; and if there be apparent danger, lie down flat on the ground. What kind of electricity is that called voltaic? That which is produced by combining two metals, as zinc and copper with water, and an acid, so as to form a voltaic battery. When this kind of elec
tricity is employed for giving shocks and acting on animals, whether dead or alive, what is it called? Galvanism, from the discoveries of Dr. Galvani. What is magnetism? That property communicated to hard iron or steel by which it attracts iron. When a magnetic needle is suspended freely, does it point to the north pole of the earth? No; it points at present to 23° W. of the N., this is called the variation of the compass. Into how many parts is the mariner's compass divided? Into thirty-two parts; the north, south, east and west being called the four principal or cardinal points. Can electricity be produced by magnets? By certain arrangements magnets may be made to generate electricity so as to give shocks and produce other effects. Can a magnet be produced by means of electricity? Yes; by rolling copper wire about a piece of soft iron, and connecting the ends of the wire with a battery. Does lightning sometimes injure the compass needle of a ship? Yes; it sometimes reverses the very poles. Can electricity be formed by heat? Yes, by joining different metals and heating the alternate points of contact. What property is possessed by a certain kind of fish? When it is touched it produces a peculiar electric effect. What are those shocks similar to? Similar to those produced from a Leyden phial or by a voltaic battery. Do these fishes affect an electrometer, or has it been possible to elicit sparks from them? They do affect an electrometer, but it has not been possible to elicit sparks from them. Can you tell me the names of the fishes which belong to the kind just described? The Gymnotus Electricus or electric eel, the Rayed Torpedo, the Silurus Electricus, and Triurus Indicus.
Among all the sciences cultivated by man, none is held in higher estimation than chemistry, both from the brilliant phænomena that it exhibits, and the practical application to which its discoveries lead.
The whole process of metallurgy is essentially chemical, from the reduction of the ore to the polishing of the instrument; dyeing and calico printing, tanning and soap making, depend entirely on chemistry for their skilful production, and so also do baking, brewing, and every culinary art. On the face of nature we cannot cast our eye without seeing chemical principles exhibited in her grand laboratory. Every drop of dew that falls, and every particle of moisture that is evaporated, are examples of chemical principles, and it is by it alone that we can explain the cause of the lightning's flash and the thunder's roar.
In the animal economy also we discover remarkable instances of chemical decomposition. The food is digested in the stomach and assimilated to the blood in a manner which, if the physiologist cannot fully explain, he at least can by chemistry imitate for digestion proceeds in the stomach of a newly killed rabbit, when slight galvanic shocks are made to pass through that organ. The compositions that the chemist forms are no less wonderful than the simple elements that he obtains. He can produce explosive mixtures of such powerful violence, that gunpowder itself may be considered as an innocuous body: but he also, from the bones of animals, can separate a substance so combustible that it becomes luminous when exposed to air, and from the ashes of wood, a metal lighter than water, and which water sets on fire. Perhaps objections may be
raised, regarding the advantage of teaching chemistry to the young; but if the science be useful, its principles cannot be too early inculcated, and we would only wish to introduce it as a relaxation after more severe studies, or as a reward when other tasks have been satisfactorily performed. This method we have tried and have found it answer admirably. The best method of teaching we consider to be that which has been so ably recommended by Dr. Reid; and that is, that each pupil ought to have a small chemical box, and should repeat on a small scale, those experiments which the teacher has performed before him. In making gases, this method, however, will not apply; but in testing, exhibiting crystallization, and other similar simple operations, the system works well.
How do you distinguish a chemical from a physical phænomenon? Natural philosophy treats of the action of masses, whilst chemistry investigates the action of atoms. In physical phænomena there is only change of place, whereas in chemical a new body or bodies result. Give instances of chemical action. Upon a few thin slices of phosphorus drop a piece of iodine; combustion ensues, and ioduret of phosphorus is formed. Upon a piece of common chalk pour dilute muriatic acid; carbonic acid is evolved, and muriate of lime remains in solution. If the piece of chalk were triturated in a mortar, each particle would retain the same properties as the mass from which it was separated; whereas by adding dilute muriatic acid we obtain a new compound essentially different from the chalk and acid with which we experimented. Hence trituration is a mechanical process, and the decomposition of chalk a chemical. What do you mean by a gas? Any body that retains the form of air at ordinary temperatures. Steam is a vapour. Atmospheric air, as it is permanently elastic,


MIAMI -- It was a bit of a surprise to see Rob Gronkowski on the field for the final play of the game with the Patriots leading by five and the ball on the Miami 31-yard line with only seven seconds left.
Usually, Gronkowski is on the field for a Hail Mary situation, but Ryan Tannehill is not Patrick Mahomes and cannot throw the ball 70-plus yards. Gronkowski replaced Devin McCourty and that may have made a difference in the play being stopped or going for a touchdown.
According to Tannehill, when he saw Gronkowski was in the game that was when he had a good feeling.
"I was kind of trailing along," he said. "[The] play kind of got messed up. Kenny [Stills] was able to … I saw Kenyan [Drake] there. I'm like, 'Pitch it, pitch it.' He pitches it, KD came back inside – I kind of had a great view of the whole thing – came back inside, then I saw him and Gronk about 10 yards away and I was like, 'Gronk is on the field. We got this.' It was pretty amazing. I was following behind and I kind of just turned around and collapsed just with the emotion of the whole thing."
After Tannehill's completion to Stills and several laterals, it was Drake and Gronkowski alone near the end zone and it was no contest. After Gronkowski slipped, Drake scored to give the Dolphins a thrilling 34-33 win.
With the win, Miami is 7-6 and still in the mix for a wild card spot.