RBS

• Nonco, an institutional digital asset brokerage firm, announced the close of its seed round today, in which it received a total of $10m of aggregate new capital.
• The seed round was a combination of equity and convertible notes, the round was led by Valor Capital Group and Hack VC.
• The capital will be used by Nonco to continue its growth and serve the Americas growing institutional demand.
• Fernando Martinez, CEO of Nonco, said: “We want to make a statement, and it begins with our name, Nonco, derived from 'nonconformist.'

• OXFORD, England, Nov. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- NAG, a leading numerical software and technical services company, announces the appointment of Jason Charlesworth as Head Quant, effective immediately.
• As Head Quant, Jason will play a pivotal role in advancing NAG's strategic initiatives within the financial services industry.
• He has garnered over two decades of experience in front-office computational financial mathematics, having successfully led quant and quant dev teams across a diverse range of assets.
• "I'm excited to join NAG at time where quants face increasingly complex computational challenges" said Jason Charlesworth, "meeting these challenges demands high-level, hands-on experience, cutting-edge solutions, and deep numerical expertise.

• Entries for the FICO® Decisions Awards are due October 13, 2023
  The ten award categories are AI, Machine Learning and Optimization, Cloud Deployment, Customer Onboarding and Management, Debt Management, Decision Management Innovation, ESG Champion, Financial Inclusion, Fraud Management, FICO Industry Vanguard and Pioneer Award.
• FICO has announced its panel of independent judges for the 2024 FICO® Decisions Awards, which honor businesses achieving outstanding results using analytics and decision management technology to grow their business, manage risk and reduce costs.
• “The panel of judges for this year's awards brings together a wealth of expertise and experience from diverse backgrounds, ensuring a well-rounded evaluation process,” said Nikhil Behl, chief marketing officer at FICO.
• Winners will receive recognition at FICO® World , which will be held in April 15-18, 2024, in San Diego, California.

• They can stand by while private businesses collapse and see the resulting loss of jobs and revenue.
• Or they can step in and use public money to prop up these firms.
• The UK boasts the second-largest collection of Nobel laureates and four of the world’s top-20 universities.

Financial woes

• The most recent data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency for the financial year ending in 2022 shows that (excluding pension adjustments, which can skew accounts for particular years) 24% of UK universities reported a deficit.
• The outgoing vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, Sir Chris Husbands, recently suggested that calls to increase fee levels could be perceived as being tone deaf.
• Of the brand names that collapsed during the 2008 global financial crisis, few will remember the Heritable Bank.
• The government, via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, paid compensation to Heritable’s customers and, while some of these monies were recouped, the upfront costs were significant and the endgame did not see all of the cost recovered.

Consequences for students

• Despite a potential merger under consideration in Australia, there is little history of mergers between universities in the UK.
• Almost inevitably, a series of messy class action lawsuits would result, with students seeking recompense for fees paid, perhaps over multiple years, that did not result in the qualification advertised.
• Future students might become more interested in the annual financial reports of a prospective university than its traditional prospectus.

Pulling down communities

• This could range from housing, hospitality and retail being starved of income, to these and many other sectors suffering a shortage of a part-time, flexible workers.
• Somewhere between £0.5bn and £1bn is a reasonable estimate of the amount attributable to any one university.
• The university sector is not immune to the kind of industrial or technological revolutions that have swept through other industries.
• Some of our policymakers and regulators might regard a university failure as an indication that the market is working.