The INTERNATIONAL BANKING CORPORATION of Bahrain with SWIFT code IBCBBHBM is under administration. The external administrator is Trowers & Hamlins.
The case is not connected to the trouble of hat Gulf International Bank (GIB) in 2009 due to its investments in complex derivatives and hedge funds. The Gulf International is an investment bank jointly owned by the governments of the six Gulf Arab.

The International Banking Corporation B.S.C.(c) (TIBC) bank is majority-owned by Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers (AHAB). AHAB is part of the extense Saudi family. They at the centre of a wider dispute with another Saudi based group of companies, Saad Group.

Trowers & Hamlins also has filed an application in the Courts of New York for an Order compelling the disclosure of key financial information.

THe SWIFT code is a unique identification code for a each bank world-wide. For individual users, the SWIFT Code is normally required by banks to transmit money across international borders. It is widely used to transfer money and messages between banks and some non-financial institutions as a standard format of Business identifier codes (BIC).

The database and register of SWIFT Codes is managed exclusively by Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (“SWIFT”). It was founded in Brussels in 1973, and it is a cooperative society under Belgian law.

The SWIFT code is composed by 8 to 11 characters.

• First 4 characters – bank code (only letters)
• Next 2 characters – ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (only letters)
• Next 2 characters – location code (letters and digits) (passive participant will have “1″ in the second character)

• if the second character is “0?, then it is typically a test code instead of the code used on the live network

• if the second character is “1?, then it indicates a passive participant in the SWIFT network. The code used for manual transaction.

• if the second character is “2?, then it indicates a reverse billing code. It means that, the recipient pays for the message instead of usual mode whereby the sender pays for the message.

Last 3 characters – branch code, optional (‘XXX’ for primary office) (letters and digits). If these last 3 positions are missing, the 8-digits code identifies the primary office of the bank.

Example
SWIFT / BIC ABNADEFFFRA

where ABNA is the code of the bank name which stands for ABN AMRO BANK NV NIEDERLASSUNG DE

DE is the country (Germany – Deutschland)
FF designates part of the bank location
FRA is the branch office code of  THE ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND N.V. (GERMANY) in FRANKFURT AM MAIN

Some data about the use of SWIFT codes

SWIFT Code or BIC code are part of ISO 9362 standards of Banking telecommunication messages.

Live countries 209
Live participants 4,329
Total live users 10,005

They were exchanging an average of over 17,5 million messages per day on average in September 2011.
In the network, there are over 7,500 “live” codes. Live codes are for partners who are actively connected to the BIC network. In addition to that, there are more than 10,000 additional codes, which can be used for manual transactions.

Traffic by region as of September 2011
Europe, Middle East & Afric2,214,929,210 66.8%
Americas677,429,680 20.4%
Asia Pacific421,719,854 12.7%

Other national routing identification codes

Some countries also implement domestic bank code or clearing system to transfer money within their own border. Bank State Branch

• BSB numbers in Australia and New Zeland
• IBAN numbers in Spain
• Routing Numbers in United States (“USA“) and Canada
• Indian Financial System Code (“IFSC”) in India
• Sort Codes in United Kingdom (“UK“)
• Bankleitzahl (“BLZ Codes”) in Germany
• Bankenclearing-Nummer (“BC”) & SIX Interbank Clearing Codes (“SIC”) in Switzerland
• Code Banque & Code Guichet In France
• Codice ABI (“ABI”) & Codice di Avviamento Bancario (“CAB Code”) in Italy
• Registreringsnummer (“Reg. nr.”) in Denmark

Direct marketing agencies walk a thin line between legitimate publicity and spam. An increasing number among them work within the deontological ethics of their profession. But even when they follow a few rules of good practice, sometimes it is their clients who do not.

Archibald Ingall Stretton manage direct marketing campaigns for O2, a mobile operator of Telefonica in the UK. The agency, part of the Havas Digital group of companies, help “transform [O2's] customers into fans of the brand”. They email hundreds of thousands of O2 customers using the email addresses that O2 provide them. O2 are legally bound to respect its customers instructions to not sent promotions, offers and any other communication of commercial nature. However it is not rare that email addresses of opt-out customers of O2 receive unsolicited emails from o2-mail.co.uk.

The domain name of the sender of the unsolicited emails is o2-email.co.uk. The name is confusingly similar to other domains owned by Telefónica O2 UK Limited for their emails to customers, such as o2.com and o2mail.co.uk. O2-email.co.uk is registered to Archibald Ingall Strettoon. Mails of Archibald Ingall Stretton use the “From:” name O2 UK and they are signed as “© 2010 Telefónica O2 UK Limited.”

Whether the negligence lies on O2, on Archibald Ingall Stretton or else, the true nature of those emails is “unsolicited commercial message”, colloquially known as spam.

Hipmunk is a quick tool to visualize the length and complexity of multi-legged flights itineraries. We tried it for one of the busiest routes in Europe: Madrid – London and transatlantic ones: Madrid – Sao Paulo.

The only big But of the search engine, at least for the 2 routes we checked, is the fact that all the listed flights were too expensive and that the most popular airlines of the route were missing.

The bailout of Ireland this week may help to learn a few lessons. First, that some ill-thought comments by the German Chancellor may precipitate a crisis of sovereign debt in a matter of days. Second, that the “markets” obstinately remain a mystifying force in the eyes of the media. Journalists get lyrical when markets “turn their attention to a country” or “remain alert about that country”. In fact such invisible hand is nothing but a bunch of traders and hedge funders speculating with debts and derivatives. Bringing sovereign debt down is part of their job, not a sign of crisis of the Euro or else.

After the crisis of Greece in May and now the rescue of Ireland, the big question now remains: for who long will the taxpayers will subsidise the bankers’ recklessness? And the second question is who is next? A snapshot of the candidates may help place the bets

• Ireland: big debt of private banks partially fuelled by housing boom and turned into a liability to taxpayers
• Portugal: big government debt without housing boom
• United Kingdom: very big debt, both of private banks and government partially fuelled by housing boom and turned into a liability to taxpayers
• Spain: small government debt, private banks allowed to get away with liabilities of the housing boom

The currency, Euro or Sterling pound is notoriously absent from these factors of instability. Let the race begin.

Online transactions still only make up a small proportion of total revenues of clothing retailers. In Europe less than 10% of the total sales were made online in 2010. What is changing recently is the entry of big names of the offline high street: Zara and H&M just launched their online stores. Gap and Banana Republic are starting to sell online outside the US.

• Aggregators: do not sell items. They refer visitors to stores. Aggregators earn commission from stores. Eg. and ShopStyle. Polyvore is a social aggregator. Online-only fashion stores: ASOS.com and Net-a-Porter
• Online marketplaces: eBay: market for independent traders and small boutiques oflast season’s stock
• Multinational high-street retailers with recently launched online shops: Zara, Gap, H&M, Banana Republic, Next
• Predominantly offline retail outlets: Topshop, Next, New Look, Karen Miller, Dorothy Perkins

The impossible art of making private retail finance appealling. An interesting campaign by ING DIRECT in March 2010. Posters in the trains of London.

Try as we might, we just couldn’t
make a mortgage application fun,
so we made it simple instead
ING DIRECT, 2010

Upon a study by Freshbooks in 2010, the countries where their invoices are paid the earliest are China with 11.9 days, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, New Zeland, Germany and Spain. Among the big economies with the longest invoice payment times are Italy and Uniked Kingdom. The country were invoices take longer to be paid is India with 31.7 days.

Interactive Things produced a visualization to illustrate the average days to pay:

Freshbooks are a provider of online billing systems mostly for freelancers, small businesses and service providers. As such, their data reflect well how the great mass of companies that make the wheels of the economy work are paid by others of their size and also by the large corporate ones.

Also, this data is more relevant than research based on surveys, which are by design actively selecting the sampling effort based on minimum cost and profile of the customer/customers paying for the research. Freshbook data is a neutral snapshot of their database at a given point in time.

In order to send a payment to the desired destination in the United States of America you need to take in consideration a few requirements for telegraphic transfers:

• Account Number

• A Fedwire Number / ABA or Routing Number is a 9 digit number ( is similar to Australia’s BSB system ). Payments to Credit Unions must have a Fedwire Number.

• If a CHIPS Routing number or Fedwire / ABA is provided do not supply a US swift code (BIC or Bank Identification Code) instead
  include as much of the Bank’s address as given.

• If a Fedwire / ABA or CHIPS Routing number is not supplied a SWIFT BIC IS Mandatory. A SWIFT code is 8 or 11 characters
  long, e.g. MLCOUS33, where MLCO = Merrill Lynch bank, CC = US or United States and 33 = Branch

There are multiple and growing examples of how Internet is permeating the business culture of offline business.

A company in the UK detects and tracks the radio frequency signals from mobile  phones to understand shopping behavior in retail spaces. Path Intelligence claims their technology is helping retailers to understand and optimize retail flow by gathering large amount of data free from human error and bias.

Among the questions that surveillance of mobile phones may help to answer, the company suggests:

• Can shopping centres afford just one anchor store or do shoppers at M&S also visit John Lewis?
• Would your shopping mall benefit from the inclusion of a gym?