Announcements

Breaking up the banks would destroy Britain’s leading position in international banking and finance, according to The Banker magazine’s Top 1000 World Banks ranking out tomorrow.

Despite the financial crisis, Britain still has three banks among the largest 10 banks in the world in terms of capital strength (HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays Bank), with Barclays Bank ranked fourth in the world in terms of profitability.

At the 2010 Financial Times Business of Luxury Conference, Marissa Mayer (Vice President, Search Products & User Experience, Google Inc.) and Dov Charney (Founder & Chief Executive Officer, American Apparel) singled out Madonna’s career as a model luxury brands should follow, citing her ability to maintain a strong core identity while constantly reinventing herself. Leonard A. Lauder (Chairman Emeritus, Estée Lauder Companies Inc.) put his own spin on how to achieve career success, saying “the key thing is this: You start high and you stay high. You start low and stay low.”

Debate on the role of digital media in the luxury industry was also lively, with Robert A. Iger (President & CEO, The Walt Disney Company) asserting that traditional marketing has been “eviscerated” by digital forms, while Jean-Christophe Bédos (President & CEO, Boucheron) contended that brands should “rethink their preconceptions that the internet necessarily equals a mass market. It’s like a city full of streets, and some are high streets and some are luxury destinations.” Marissa Mayer offered further advice to digital architects, saying that luxury websites should be orchestrated for a simpler and faster experience by employing “less flash” and automatically defaulting to the “view all” option when revealing search results.

Consumer News Award: Josephine Cumbo (highly commended)

Apple Design Award 2010: The FT iPad application

The Financial Times today announces the appointment of Peter Spiegel as its Brussels bureau chief.

Spiegel will return to the Financial Times in August after just over a year at the Wall Street Journal, covering foreign policy and national security issues from its Washington bureau, and three years as Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.