London Grammar falls from Coldplay's tree

Raphael Michilis Fonseca

Apparently we entered the COLDPLAY harvesting period. fter the opening of the season with Reload, by Sebastian Ingrosso, Tommy Trash and John Martin, now it is time to collect another fruit from Coldplay's tree of influence: London Grammar's Strong. 

Is it only me who can hear Coldplay's Trouble all over Hannah Reid's vocal in this tune? I'm not trying to say it is a cover version, neither plagiarism. Her vocals are strong and the lyrics are beautiful. I prefer to see it as a reverence to Chris Martin, his friends and the incredible job they have been doing all of theses years.

Also, I had so many people listening to Reload and asking me what's the name of this new Coldplay's song? Yeah! Agree. For me it is nothing less than a Cold Play's electronic child.

I'm not complaining. I like the three groups. In different levels of course, and think we should give the due credit to Cold Play as the precursor of this movement. Can I call it a movement? Trend maybe? I don't know. Lets just enjoy it all. 

Atos acquires Dutch e-payments business Quality Equipment

By Raphael Michilis
France-headquartered IT services company Atos has incorporated its Dutch partner, the electronic payments firm Quality Equipment.

The acquisition is part of Atos global expansion strategy, and the firm expects to become leader in end-to-end coverage of terminals and merchants services in the Netherlands.

“Atos acquires a company in its core business located in the Benelux where the Group is already working with large customers, and has a leading market position. We will be able to offer value added services with an enriched payment services portfolio to our customers in the Benelux and across Europe,” said Marc-Henri Desportes, Atos executive vice president of Hi-Tech Transactional Services (HTTS).

The deal adds payment systems expertise to Atos portfolio in areas such as identification, access management and is an all-in-one supplier of PIN terminals for various applications.

Atos will merger Quality Equipment to its HTTS and electronic payments arm, and benefit from Quality Equipement's market share for terminal activity high growth rate, which increased by 20% from 2010 to 2011.

“This transaction is fully in line with the strategy of the group to grow its HTTS activities and to strengthen its international position in the payments area,” said Desportes.

The French company, which employs 74,000 employees in 48 countries, said the acquisition will help them build a European competence centre for value added services for merchants.

Europe accounts for 47% of world payments in renminbi

By Raphael Michilis

24 April 2012 

Europe has overtaken Asia Pacific in the use of the Chinese renminbi for global payments in the first quarter of 2012, according to the report RMB Tracker by Swift, the payments and messaging platform.

Aside from China and Hong Kong, Europe is the biggest contributor to RMB offshore transactions, accounting for 47% of the payments in renminbi worldwide. Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific’s share in RMB payments declined from 59% to 41%

RMB represented 6.7% of all European payments with China and Hong Kong in Q1 2012, an adoption rate slightly lower than the 7.2% observed in transactions with Asia Pacific countries.

However, European contribution to RMB payments is still more significant than its counterpart’s, thanks to its bigger absolute payments value.  The contribution in absolute value to RMB payments from several European countries is also bigger than that of many Asia-Pacific countries.

UK-based financial institutions are leading the City of London to be the next major offshore RMB centre. It did 30% of RMB payments and 46% of RMB FX in Q4 2011, staying on par with Singapore in RMB payments and first in RMB FX for the same period.

Africa and the Middle East also showed strong adoption of the RMB, but the overall value is still really small, the Swift report shows.

Adoption in the US and Canada was relatively good for that period, but nearly zero in Latin America.

Renminbi in numbers:

• 8.6% was the average growth of global payments from February to March

• 13.2% was the RMB growth for the same period, with its share climbing from 0.33% to 0.35%

• 16th was the position occupied by the RMB in the currency global ranking, after leaving the position 17th in February