That Was The Week: The art of doing retail

The investment in technology, marketing and compliance in order to sell structured products has always been hefty, with the swarm of regulations introduced over the past 10 years almost enough to make even the richest banks blanch. And keeping in line with the whims of lawmakers means more than hiring a fleet of lawyers, it entails educational programmes some of which would be the envy of many homes of academia. Not long before the financial crisis, Lehman Brothers stumbled across two supposed