The Dash For Cash: Leaked Files Reveal RBS Systematically Crushed British Businesses For Profit

The Royal Bank of Scotland killed or crippled thousands of businesses during the recession as a result of a deliberate plan to add billions of pounds to its balance sheet, according to a leaked cache of thousands of secret documents.

The RBS Files – revealed today by BuzzFeed News and BBC Newsnight – lay bare the secret policies under which firms were pushed into the bank’s feared troubled-business unit, Global Restructuring Group (GRG), which chased profits by hitting them withmassive fees and fines and by snapping up their assets at rock-bottom prices.

The internal documents starkly contradict the bank’s public insistence that GRG acted as an “intensive care unit” for ailing firms, tasked with restructuring their loan agreements to “help them back to health”.

RBS has repeatedly denied allegations that it destroyed healthy businesses for profit – first raised in a damning report on its treatment of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the government adviser Lawrence Tomlinson three years ago. The bank paid the magic circle law firm Clifford Chance to conduct an “independent investigation” that found “no evidence” of the claims, and an official inquiry by the banking regulator has been long delayed.

The RBS Files now reveal for the first time that, under pressure from the government, the taxpayer-owned bank ran down businesses in its restructuring unit as part of a deliberate, premeditated strategy to cut lending and bolster profits. And they show that GRG, ignoring repeated warnings about conflict of interest, collaborated closely with the bank’s own property division, West Register, to buy up heavily discounted assets it had forced its customers to sell.

When confronted with the leaked evidence last week, the bank made its first majoradmission: “In the aftermath of the financial crisis we did not always meet our own high standards and let some of our SME customers down.” But it continued to deny that it had “targeted businesses to transfer them to GRG or drove them to insolvency”.

The files reveal that 16,000 firms were sucked into the restructuring unit after the financial crash – including care homes, hotels, farms, and children’s centres. BuzzFeed News has spoken to 15 small-business owners who say their healthy firms were ruined after they were put into GRG. Some have lost their homes, marriages, and health as well as the companies they built from scratch and all their assets.

The documents – comprising internal emails, confidential memos, secret policy documents, minutes, and financial records leaked from inside the bank by an anonymous whistleblower – today show:

• RBS managers encouraged employees to hunt for ways to boost their bonuses by forcing customers into loan restructuring in order to extract heavy fees as part of a profit drive nicknamed “Project Dash for Cash”.
• Firms that had never missed a loan payment were pushed into GRG under the bank’s secret policies for reasons that had nothing to do with financial distress, including for telling RBS they wanted to leave the bank, falling out with managers, or threatening to sue over mistreatment.
• Once in GRG, firms were hit with crippling fees, fines, and interest rate hikes that could run into seven figures, helping to net the restructuring unit a profit of more than a billion pounds in a single year.
• Contrary to claims by the bank, there were no Chinese walls between GRG and West Register bosses, who sat together on both the controlling committee that held sway over which businesses were transferred into the restructuring unit and the property acquisition committee that signed off the bank’s bids for their distressed assets. Auditors repeatedly warned about perceived conflicts of interest in GRG.
• The property division, which amassed assets worth £3.3 billion during the crisis, was passed information that was not available to other bidders when it wanted to acquire properties from businesses in GRG. In contrast to what RBS executives told parliament, properties could be sold to West Register without being advertised on the open market.
• Staff were told to conceal conflicts of interest from customers when demanding cheap shares in their businesses or stakes in their properties.
• The revelations will pile pressure on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to conclude itslong-delayed inquiry into RBS’s treatment of its small-business customers. Tomlinson, whose report triggered the FCA probe, said the documents obtained by BuzzFeed News “seem to prove that there was a policy within RBS to destroy businesses, to add value to their balance sheet through GRG”. He urged the regulator to act decisively: “Those people should now be brought to book.”
  Alison Loveday, who says her law firm Berg has dealt with “hundreds of cases” in which healthy firms were “devastated by GRG’s activities”, called on the FCA to take urgent action to ensure business owners are “properly compensated for the loss and damage they have suffered”. She blamed GRG’s heavy-handed tactics for causing “heart attacks, family breakdown, and even suicides”.
  The RBS Files raise serious questions about the basis on which Clifford Chance exonerated the bank in its 2014 report, which was welcomed by RBS chief executive Ross McEwan at the time as evidence that GRG was “a pretty good unit”. The documents also expose the hollowness of the evidence given to the Commons Treasury select committee by RBS executives, who told MPs the restructuring division’s “main objective is to restore the customers’ health and strength” and denied 27 times that it sought profit.
• Derek Sach, who headed GRG, and Chris Sullivan, the bank’s then deputy chief executive, testified that staff were not put under pressure to increase customers’ fees and that properties acquired by West Register were “always marketed on the open market” – claims the internal documents contradict.
  The bank’s chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, later had to write to the committee to withdraw the executives’ repeated assertion that GRG was “absolutely not a profit centre”, claiming they had made “an honest mistake”. The RBS Files reveal that both Sach and Sullivan were sent regular updates on GRG’s “profit and loss” performance, which itemised revenues from fees, interest rate hikes, and asset acquisitions that far exceeded its costs. Sach, who toldMPs that GRG “does not contribute to the bank’s profits at all”, was responsible for signing off internal documents thatdescribed the unit as “a major contributor to the Group’s bottom line”.
  The white-haired restructuring boss emerges from the documents as an all-powerful puppet master, simultaneously heading the management committee that held sway over which businesses were transferred into GRG, the West Register committees that decided which assets the property division should acquire, the asset purchase committees that signed off its major bids, and the risk and audit committee that scrutinised the restructuring division’s work. Repeated warnings from RBS’s external auditors about the “reputational risk” arising from this apparent conflict of interest were ignored. Sach declined to comment when contacted by BuzzFeed News.
  The documents show GRG staff were asked to split customers into two groups – those considered “viable” and those “the bank would like to exit”.
  “Viable” firms would have their debts restructured to boost the bank’s revenues and often be forced to surrender cheap stakes in their assets or equity to GRG’s investment arm. But if firms were considered a potential risk, even if they were not insolvent, staff were instructed to “exit” by “placing pressure on the company to repay the debt as soon as possible through refinancing, realisation of assets, and possibly commencing insolvency proceedings”.
• When assets were sold out of insolvency, often for dramatically discounted prices, West Register would be brought in to decide if it wanted to make a bid, with GRG managers privately guiding its staff on just on how much they would need to offer.
  RBS has repeated its denial that the property division profited by buying assets cheap and selling them on for an inflated price. But confidential internal audit documents note that West Register is “used by GRG to acquire property assets from distressed situations” and “seeks to exit properties via a future commercial sale in order to extract maximum economic value” that “can often result in a capital gain in relation to the original property acquisition”.
  In a statement, RBS said it had lost £2 billion on its loans to small and medium-sized businesses during the financial crisis. It said RBS did not make an overall profit from GRG’s activities – the restructuring unit’s revenues did not exceed the losses the entire bank suffered on business loans gone bad after the crash. But its statement acknowledged, for the first time, that “a number of our customers did not receive the level of service they should have done” in GRG.
  “We could have managed the transition to GRG better and we could have better explained to customers any changes to the prices or fees we were charging,” its statement said. “We also did not always handle customer complaints well. As a result, a number of our customers did not receive the level of service they should have done or, importantly, that they would receive now.” The bank also said it would change its internal policies so that a customer litigating against the bank would no longer be among its restructuring “triggers”.
• But RBS still insisted that “GRG’s role was to protect the bank’s position, where possible by working with distressed businesses to return them to financial health,” and said it had seen “nothing to support the allegations that the bank artificially distressed otherwise viable SME businesses or deliberately caused them to fail”.
  A cornerstone of RBS’s denial that it systematically destroyed small businesses has been the insistence that it had no reason to push good customers into difficulty. But the files reveal how government pressure to reduce its loan exposures, coupled with the opportunity to raid the cash, equity, and assetsof businesses going under, gave the bank a powerful incentive to pull the plug on thousands of its customers.
  The government and regulators pushed RBS to achieve three main goals after the bailout. First, they pressed the bank to reduce its exposure to property loans, which were a main cause of the financial crisis. Then they required RBS to increase its capital reserves as a buffer against losses. Finally, they pushed for the bank to make more money overall, so that it could increase its lending to new businesses to aid the economic recovery, and so the government could sell its ownership stake at a profit. RBS devised a strategy to do just that.
  The plan – which bosses told staff the government had “endorsed and agreed” – was to offload tens of billions of pounds’ worth of business loans that the bank had deemed “non-core”. It was widely hailed as an essential move to shore up the bank’s finances after the crash and protect the taxpayer’s investment.
  But the RBS Files now reveal GRG played a central role in the delivery of that plan, acting as a clearinghouse for many of those “non-core” businesses as the bank pushed them towards the exit door: generating bumper revenues by extracting massive fees and fines, clawing back loans secured against property, seizing chunks of their equity, and offloading their assets. Through West Register, the bank could acquire their prime properties at fire-sale prices, converting them from risky loan exposures into owned assets that the bank planned to sell off later for a capital gain. And, by quarantining the properties in a network of subsidiaries owned by West Register, the bank substantially reduced the amount of capital it had to freeze on its balance sheet as a regulatory buffer against potential losses, freeing up extra cash.
  The inside story of how that plan was put together in the teeth of the financial hurricane – and went on to cause misery for business owners across the country – is revealed today for the first time.
• As summer turned to autumn in 2008, panic was pulsing through Royal Bank of Scotland’s global headquarters in Edinburgh. The credit crunch had sunk its teeth deep into the bank’s balance sheet, and it was haemorrhaging money at a terrifying rate. The Scottish giant had swelled to become Britain’s biggest financial institution, amassing global assets worth £2.2 trillion in a period of frenzied acquisition during the boom years, but now it was perilously close to insolvency. Leaked emails reveal that, already, the British firms that banked with RBS were being made to feel the pain. Managers rushed to bleed business customers for extra fees and higher interest rates in a frantic drive to transfuse the bank with cash – and to bump up their own bonuses to boot.
• Rhydian Davies, RBS’s gregarious head of property in the south region’s corporate banking division, called a meeting of his managers and told them he had come up with a plan to get them through the tough times that September. Davies had a boyish fondness for nicknaming his initiatives with a touch of derring-do, so he had called his proposal “Project Dash for Cash”. The region was falling way behind on its financial targets, and it needed to use some clever tricks to squeeze more money out of its customers. “The only significant impact that can be made will be in cash fees,” he reminded them in afollow-up email after the meeting. “These will principally come in the form of restructuring/exit fees.” Davies was effectively asking his staff to rip up customers’ original loan agreements and either charge them more to continue borrowing by “restructuring” the deal with higher interest rate and fees, or charge them exit fees if the loans were not renewed.
• To do that, the bank had to demonstrate that customers had breached a “covenant” in their loan contracts. Internal guidance to managers explained that this would “enable the bank to break the ‘agreement’ with the customer” and “either call for repayment or renegotiate the terms” of the loan. Helpfully, tumbling property prices across the country offered a neat solution: A vast proportion of RBS’s business loans were secured against real estate, and most agreements contained a “loan-to-value” covenant stipulating that the customer’s borrowing must not exceed 70-80% of the value of their assets. The dire economic outlook made it easy to argue that a fall in the value of properties put customers in breach of their loan-to-value (LTV) covenants, and that meant the bank got to break the deal.
  So, after the meeting, Davies forwarded managers a “target list” of loans secured against property assets and asked staff to scour it for businesses they could force into new, costlier contracts. “I’d like you to think of customers where; They have breached covenant [or] Could breach covenant (if revalued now),” he wrote, exhorting them think of “our bonuses” and “our pride in delivering” as they sought reasons to void their customers’ loans. Davies, who did not respond to a request for comment, asked staff to keep a log of their work in a spreadsheet he had waggishly titled the Blue Peter Cash Appeal, and signed the email “Rhyds”.
  The problem for the bank’s customers was that property valuations are, as its executives later admitted in their evidence to parliament, “an art as well as a science”, and RBS often evaluated properties in a way that dispensed with any independent checks and balances.
  In order to claim a business needed to have its loan “restructured”, RBS managers needed only perform an internal “desktop” valuation – effectively just estimating how much its properties might be worth. RBS’s auditors raised concerns that the “valuation of properties might be manipulated as valuation is performed internally”. What’s more, during the crisis, managers tended to assess the value of customers’ properties on the basis of how much they would fetch not in an ordinary sale but in a fire sale, with a short marketing window. That tactic alone could massively depress the estimated purchase price. Armed with these advantages, it was not difficult to find customers who “could breach covenant (if revalued now)”.
  “There were a lot of conditions the bank would use to invoke failings or get a revaluation done,” one former RBS insider told BuzzFeed News and the BBC on condition of anonymity. “That’s what the bank invoked when it all went horribly wrong in 2008 to get everything restructured. You say it was £230,000 two years ago, it’s now £180,000, you’re under water now.” That, he said, was “where they hit you up”. RBS said that if a customer disputed the bank’s internal valuation, there would “ordinarily” be nothing to stop them getting the property surveyed independently. However, one email in the files reveals the bank’s auditors had flagged a further concern: Managers could “over-ride or ignore third party information (such as third party valuations)”.

marketing de luxe

Le luxe, ses spécificités et son marketing adapté

Le luxe est un marché qui attire et qui fonctionne grâce à des produits singuliers vendus chers. Plus le produit est coûteux, plus il va susciter de l’intérêt, comme Supdemod l’enseigne dans son Bachelor Marketing de la Mode et du Luxe. L’engouement qu’il provoque engendre alors une demande à la hauteur du succès du produit. Ce déroulement est le même que ce soit pour des produits de luxe de Haute Couture, de joaillerie ou pour les vins par exemple. 

Pour toutes les campagnes de marketing de luxe, il faut d’abord bien déterminer si son produit fait partie du marché du luxe. On peut attribuer 4 caractéristiques à un produit pour pouvoir le qualifier de luxueux. En effet, il doit :

• Avoir une excellente qualité
• Valoir cher, c’est-à-dire être vendu à un prix perçu comme très élevé
• Être rare dans l’offre et la demande
• Se caractériser par le fait qu’il est accessoire et non un produit purement fonctionnel

Pour l’ensemble de ces types de produits, on retrouve un marché du luxe à échelle mondiale. Les produits sont des œuvres d’art créées par des personnes reconnues dans leur domaine. Ainsi, la force des produits de luxe réside en leur prix, leur rareté et leur popularité. 

Le marketing du luxe : quelles stratégies

Le marketing du luxe s’appuie sur les bases du marketing. On retrouve dedans des points classiques comme la communication, le management, l’économie, le commerce, etc. Cependant, pour le luxe, il ne faut pas prendre en compte toutes les théories classiques sur :

• La fixation du prix
• Le positionnement des produits
• Le ciblage comportemental 

En effet, le fonctionnement du marché du luxe n’est pas le même que le marché classique. Une marque du luxe favorise l’image que dégage son produit sur sa rareté. Son but ? Créer le besoin pour faire rêver l’acheteur. On retrouve dans le marketing de luxe 2 stratégies différentes :

•  le marketing intuitif pour un luxe inaccessible avec une politique de prix élevé, une politique de  distribution réduite et sélective et enfin une communication simple dont le produit est à l‘origine
• le marketing élaboré pour un luxe accessible avec une politique de prix où le rapport qualité-prix est mis en avant, une politique de distribution qui implique les centres ville des grandes villes comme points de vente

Pour pouvoir s’épanouir dans le marketing de luxe, il est préférable d’être passionné par le domaine du luxe et de connaître tout ce qui a  trait à cet univers. De plus, une bonne culture générale et la curiosité sont deux qualités qui, sans la passion, ne pourront pas être bien employées.

The 24 anti-laws of marketing

The 24 anti-laws of marketing

1. Forget about positioning; luxury is not comparative. 
2. Does your product have enough flaws to give it soul? 
3. Don’t pander to your customers’ wishes. 
4. Keep non-enthusiasts out. 
5. Don’t respond to rising demand. 
6. Dominate the client. 
7. Make it difficult for clients to buy. 
8. Protect clients from non-clients, the big from the small. 
9. The role of advertising is not to sell. 
10. Communicate to those whom you are not targeting. 
11. The presumed price should always seem higher than the actual price. 
12. Luxury sets the price; price does not set luxury. 
13. Raise your prices as time goes on, in order to increase demand. 
14. Keep raising the average price of the product range. 
15. Do not sell. 
16. Keep stars out of your advertising. 
17. Cultivate closeness to the arts for initiate. 
18. Do not relocate your factories. 
19. Do not hire consultants. 
20. Do not test. 
21. Do not look for consensus. 
22. Do not look after group synergies. 
23. Do not look for cost reduction. 
24. Do not sell openly on the Internet.

Marketing To A High-End Consumer, Using The Luxury Strategy

40 years ago, a group of European luxury brands, famous but small at the time, decided to use the opportunity of globalization to grow significantly beyond the small circle of their happy-but-few historical customers. To do so, they needed to implement a marketing strategy, but they quickly discovered that while the usual marketing strategies would help them grow, they would also put them out of the luxury bracket. So, they decided to implement a totally new business strategy, which lies behind the nonstop success of those brands. All this is detailed in The Luxury Strategy, the book that I co-authored with Jean-Noël Kapferer, based on my own experience with Louis Vuitton- one of the leaders of this strategic move. For this article, I will focus on the marketing aspect of this strategy, and, more precisely, on what we named “the anti-laws of marketing.” In fact, we coined the term anti-law of marketing to designate the counterintuitive managerial principles, which made these brands command their incredible pricing power and margins.

Reaching your client

The first step is to understand that in the so-called luxury market, there are three possible strategies, which I named in my book as luxury, fashion and premium. The difference between these three strategies is huge. It does not change much in the eyes of most basic consumers, at least in the short-term. But when one has to manage a brand, the difference is pivotal. In fact, if you decide to implement a fashion or a premium strategy, the classical marketing styles works pretty well. But if you decide to implement a luxury strategy, you need to reconsider all the aspects of your marketing management.

A. The luxury strategy aims at creating the highest brand value and pricing power by leveraging all intangible elements of singularity- i.e. time, heritage, country of origin, craftsmanship, man-made, small series, prestigious clients, etc.

B. The fashion strategy is a totally different business model: here, heritage, time, are not important; fashion sells by being fashionable, which is to say, a very perishable value.

C. The premium strategy can be summarized as “pay more, get more.” Here the goal is to prove -through comparisons and benchmarking- that this is the best value within its category. Quality/price ratio is the motto. This strategy is, by essence, comparative.

The luxury strategy was originally developed for the broadly defined luxury market, and it is there that you can find it the most today as well– in fact, it’s the most efficient strategy in this market. It is seldom met on other markets, even though it can be very successful there, as brands like Apple and Nespresso have demonstrated. There are 24 anti-laws (see the full list below); thereafter, I analyze four that require an in-depth treatment.

La relation entre l’islam et le terrorisme

Cinq idées reçues sur l’islam et le terrorisme:

1. UN SALAFISTE N’EST PAS FORCÉMENT UN TERRORISTE EN PUISSANCE

Nombre de discours se concentrent en ce moment sur l’islamisme, et particulièrement sur le salafisme, courant traditionaliste, qui veutrevenir à l’islam des origines. Sa montée en puissance dans l’Hexagone date des années 1990, grâce notamment au prosélytisme d’étudiants diplômés revenus d’Arabie saouditeoù ils étaient allés suivre une formation ensciences religieuses. Il est associé à une vision de l’islam qui choque en France : port du voile ou d’un habit spécifique, de la barbe pour les hommes, pratique très rigoriste…

Néanmoins, dire que le salafisme est en soi un vecteur de terrorisme serait un raccourci abusif : la majorité des salafistes ne se reconnaissent pas dans le djihadisme et la plupart appartiennent à ce que l’on appelle la branche quiétiste, non violente, qui se refuse à tout engagement politique, source de « fitna » (« division »), et se concentre sur la pratique religieuse.

Il existe cependant une branche « révolutionnaire » du salafisme, le takfirisme, qui vise l’instauration par la force d’un Etat gouverné selon les règles de l’islam radical.

Lire aussi   Pourquoi il ne faut pas confondre le salafisme et le takfirisme

Si on observe les profils des terroristes djihadistes qui ont frappé la France, de Mohamed Merah à Abdelhamid Abaaoud, on constate par ailleurs qu’ils ne correspondent pas au cliché du « salafiste » barbu, étudiant l’islam pendant des années. Ce sont de jeunes délinquants, radicalisés suite à des rencontres, notamment en prison, qui ont souvent fait des voyages en Syrie, mais qui n’avaient pas un passé de religieux fervents.

2. L’ISLAM N’EST PAS UN CRITÈRE ETHNIQUE, C’EST UNE PRATIQUE RELIGIEUSE

« Les musulmans doivent se désolidariser des terroristes », « les musulmans français ne doivent pas céder au communautarisme »… Depuis plusieurs années, on observe dans le discours une essentialisation de l’islam, comme dans ce tweet de Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, candidate duFront national aux élections régionales en Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

A travers ce discours, les « musulmans » sont assimilés à une sorte de « bloc » unique, à qui on reproche son communautarisme… tout en le considérant d’emblée comme une communauté. Au point, d’ailleurs, de donner à penser que toutes les personnes de culture musulmane sont des croyants.

Or rien n’est plus faux : d’une part, l’islam, comme le christianisme ou le bouddhisme, est une religion. On ne naît pas musulman, on le devient, ou non. On peut être maghrébin et athée, être Syrien et chrétien…. Et même si l’on se dit croyant, la pratique peut être plus ou moins régulière, l’observation des dogmes et des règles également.

Sans compter qu’il n’y a pas une seule pratique mais des pratiques : chiites ou sunnites n’observent pas tout à fait les mêmes rites, et d’une mosquée à l’autre, prêches et vision de l’islam peuvent fortement changer, comme c’est le cas d’ailleurs de toutes les religions.

3. TOUS LES MUSULMANS NE SONT PAS ARABES, ET RÉCIPROQUEMENT

En raison de son héritage colonial et de l’important contingent de Français d’origine marocaine, algérienne et tunisienne présents sur le territoire national, il est fréquent d’assimiler en France musulmans et arabes. L’idée est triplement absurde.

D’abord, à strictement parler, le terme « arabe » renvoie aux populations originaires de la péninsule arabique (Arabie saoudite, Qatar, Emirats arabes unis…) et est donc inadéquat pour les populations d’origine maghrébine.

Ensuite, la confession et l’origine géographique ne préjugent évidemment pas l’une de l’autre. De même qu’il existe des Marocains juifs et chrétiens, il existe des musulmans français de longue date : à Saint-Denis à la Réunion, la première mosquée a été construite en 1905.

Enfin, le visage de l’islam change considérablement d’un pays à l’autre, selon sonhistoire. Au Royaume-Uni, par exemple, la plus grande partie de la population musulmane est d’origine pakistanaise ; en Allemagne, elle est d’origine turque. Au niveau mondial, le pays musulman le plus peuplé se situe en Asie : il s’agit de l’Indonésie, avec plus de 200 millions de fidèles, devant l’Inde et le Pakistan.

4. LA FRANCE N’EST PAS « ENVAHIE » PAR LES MOSQUÉES

Contrairement à ce qu’avancent plusieurspersonnalités ou médias comme Valeurs actuelles, la France n’est pas « envahie » par les mosquées.

Le nombre des lieux de culte n’est pas facile àquantifier, notamment en raison du manque de centralisme de l’islam en France. Contrairement au catholicisme, qui dispose d’une organisation claire et structurée, l’islam, est très peu hiérarchisé.

En 2012, le ministère de l’intérieur estimait qu’il y avait dans le pays 2 449 lieux de culte musulman, dont seulement 2,5 % de mosquées avec minaret. Ce nombre a fortement augmenté durant la dernière décennie : le précédent recensement faisait état de 1 536 lieux de culte en 2000.

Mais, rapporté au nombre de fidèles, ce chiffre reste très inférieur aux lieux de culte catholique. Si on estime qu’il y a en France 2 millions de pratiquants musulmans, on parvient au ratio d’un lieu de culte pour 816 fidèles. Si on reprend le chiffre de 3 millions de catholiques pratiquants (qui fréquentent au moins une messe par mois), et qu’on le rapporte aux 40 000 églises consacrées en France, on arrive à un ratio d’1 église pour 75 fidèles.

5. LE CORAN N’APPELLE PAS EXPLICITEMENT AU DJIHAD ARMÉ

Après les attentats du 13 novembre, comme après ceux de janvier, les ventes de Coran se sont envolées (7 des 20 meilleures ventes de livres religieux sur Amazon France concernent l’islam, dont le Coran en première place), comme s’il s’agissait de trouver dans le livre l’origine de cet appel à la violence.

A l’instar de la Bible ou de la Torah, le Coran a parfois des conceptions très datées de la justiceet certaines sourates prônent la violence vis-à-vis des autres confessions, tout comme d’autres appellent au contraire à la tolérance.

Par exemple, dans la sourate 47, dite sourate de Mohammed, il est écrit :

« Quand vous êtes en guerre avec les impies, passez-les au fil de l’épée jusqu’à leur reddition. »

Mais dans la sourate 3, dite sourate de la familled’Imran, il est aussi écrit :

« Le fait qu’ils soient coupables ne te permet pas de décider de leur sort. C’est à Dieu seul qu’il appartient de leur pardonner ou de lespunir. »

Néanmoins, le djihad n’y est nullement décrit comme l’un des piliers de l’islam. Le concept de « djihad » (littéralement « l’effort ») s’applique avant tout au travail du pratiquant pour seconformer aux règles dictées par sa croyance. Ce n’est pas un appel au combat armé.

« Aucun livre sacré n’est aujourd’hui aussi souvent invoqué à l’appui de la violence ou de l’oppression, affirment Faker Korchane, professeur de philosophie, et Sophie Gherardi, fondatrice du site d’information Fait-religieux.com. Au point qu’il est légitime de se demander ce qui, dans ses versets ou dans son statut même, peut prêter à une telle instrumentalisation politique et religieuse ».

L’alternance entre explicite et ambigu dans le livre lui-même autorise de fait beaucoup d’interprétations. Pour Faker Korchane et Sophie Gherardi, l’interprétation est une véritable « passion » dans l’islam. Ils citent d’ailleurs Youssef Seddik, philosophe et anthropologue :« Le Coran a aboli toute interprétation imposée par une Eglise. En islam, chacun peut interpréter selon ses moyens, même le plus simple des croyants. Seule compte l’intention. »

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It promises an irresistible combination of wealth and independence. All you need is a computer and an internet connection – and then you can earn a fortune from the comfort of your home.

This is the lure of financial trading for profit. As the popular BBC programme Millions by the Minute has shown, the dream seems to be gaining hold. It appeals to parents who hope to be able to squeeze in some profitable trading between school runs. And it is equally a way out for those who simply don’t want – or don’t fit into – the corporate world of the office.

Now the world of social media has added an additional, attractive twist to the dream of being your own boss and making a killing. With “copy trading” – which enables you to mimic the investment moves of the “professionals” – you can supposedly cash in even if you know nothing at all about the markets.

Derrick Clark, a 43-year-old businessman, was keen to trade the global currency markets in his spare time to pull in a little extra income. He was excited about the possibilities, but also in awe of the challenges and pitfalls.

He knew rapid buying and selling of shares and other financial securities was notoriously tricky and that many beginners struggled to make a profit. Copy trading, however, seemed to offer a solution. It seeks to bypass many of the headaches involved in trying to become the next Warren Buffett.

 

 

Mr Clark signed up with ZuluTrade, one of a number of fast-growing copy trading – or “social trading” – platforms that allow novice traders to mimic the strategies of more experienced investors. The premise is simple: if you decide to “copy” another trader and they bet, for example, on the pound rising against the dollar, then so will you. Other providers include eToro and Currensee.

“Trading can be hard,” said Anastasios Frangos of ZuluTrade. “But with social trading there’s no need to study the markets. It’s ideal for people who don’t know how to trade – they can simply copy more experienced traders.”

ZuluTrade customers sign up with a third party broker to trade the foreign exchange (“forex”) markets and an account can be opened for a few hundred pounds. It ranks its traders by historic performance to help users decide who to copy.

Mr Clark carefully analysed the data before he risked his hard-earned cash. At first it went well and he made some money. One particular trader had an army of copiers and looked like a safe pair of hands. “I watched him for 10 months and he never lost on a trade,” Mr Clark recalled. “But then it went horribly wrong.”

The market moved sharply in the opposite direction. Mr Clark closed his position quickly but others were not so lucky. “This trader lost millions in live accounts. It was epic.”

ZuluTrade has since introduced a raft of risk protection measures that seek to safeguard its users. But Mr Clark remains unconvinced.

“It’s just not realistic to think that anyone can accurately predict any market, especially forex, the vast majority of the time,” he said. “In my experience every trader with a lot of followers will eventually crash and burn.”

The biggest social trading platform is eToro, which has more than three million users worldwide. The firm’s boss, Yoni Assia, likens its offering to social media sites such as Facebook that allow people to chat and share online. “We’re a social network,” Mr Assia said. “It’s a place where people can communicate, follow and copy each other. It allows people with less understanding of the markets to see what more experienced investors are doing.”

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Customers are allowed to risk only 20pc of their total equity copying any one trader and an account can be opened for as little as £30. eToro operates like a spread-betting platform, allowing customers to bet on major markets but without the need to stump up the full value of the transaction.

However, the “spread” – the gap between the buy and sell price – on eToro can be more expensive than with well-known spread-betting operators such as IG Index and City Index.

“We’re helping people discover the wisdom of the crowds,” Mr Assia added. “By copying other traders people gain a better understanding of the markets and our research shows that eToro users are consistently more profitable than people who just trade manually.”

Brett Cooper runs a website that reviews copy trading providers and has written a book to help novices navigate the sector. He said: “Many platforms give the impression that it’s easy to make money copy trading, but it’s not. Finding someone to copy who knows what they are doing is hard and many of the traders on these platforms are just out to make a quick buck.”

On some platforms it looks as if a particular trader has made solid gains, Mr Cooper said, but the underlying data reveals that they are sitting on a number of losing positions that they have not closed yet in the hope the trades will bounce back.

“You still need to do your homework and put the time in,” Mr Cooper said. “You still need to apply careful risk assessment methods before you copy another trader.

“It’s still risky and the majority of people are not actually making any money.”

'It’s not life-changing but it is something I really enjoy'

How do “copy trader” sites work – and if you sign up to one, who exactly are you copying? And how much does it cost?

Anyone can become a “popular investor” on eToro or a “signal provider” on ZuluTrade if they can convince enough people to copy their trades. “Signal providers” receive a commission for each trade executed by a live follower account while eToro rewards “popular investors” based on the number of copiers they rack up.

Unlike its rivals, Currensee vets the traders on its platform and customers choose from a select band of experienced traders to copy. It charges a 2pc service fee on the average capital in a user’s account.

Thomas Glaser (pictured at the top), a software developer from Berkshire, has been trading with eToro since April. Early on, one of the forex traders he was copying went bust, taking with them hundreds of copiers. “I was lucky to get out relatively unscathed,” he said. “There are a fair share of reckless traders out there.”

But he persevered, now sticking to blue-chip stocks. Over the past six months he has built up his own legion of copiers and has made a 6pc gain.

“It’s not a life-changing amount of money but it is something I really enjoy.”

You can open an account with just 200 €. right here

Gagner de l'argent sur le Forex avec eToro - Bourse Binaire

SALUT,

Est-il possible de travailler 5 heures par MOIS et de gagner suffisamment d'argent sur Internet pour en vivre ?

Guillaume, 23 ans, l'a fait.

Il vit en Inde et profite de son temps libre pour se consacrer à ses projets : développer ses compétences en marché des capitaux, et son blog sur le même sujet, rencontrer beaucoup de gens et se faire des amis, s'impliquer dans une ONG qui aide à l'éducation des Indiens... et profiter de la vie !

Et le plus beau dans tout cela ?

Guillaume est devenu indépendant financièrement deux mois et demi après avoir créé son e-commerce en ligne alors qu'il n'avait aucune expérience :
en e-commerce
en logistique
en marketing
ou en relation client
Ses secrets ? Déjà, c'est eToro qui fait tout le travail pour lui... plus deux ou trois petits autres trucs qu'il fait c’est vendre ; acheter ; et faire des spéculations….

 donc avec Etoro c'est le bon coin  pour investir votre argents

 

Première et principale raison, la conservation et la progression de vos fonds et avoirs. Investir peut aider à s’assurer de conserver ce que vous avez déjà acquis.

Deuxième raison, est d’augmenter votre richesse. Un investissement va créer une richesse sur le court, moyen ou long terme et vous obtiendrez beaucoup plus d’avantages dans le futur.

Enfin, pour atteindre un objectif précis, par exemple, de sorte que, vous aurez plus d’argent pour vivre, pour votre retraite, pour aider vos enfants à pouvoir continuer leurs études, pour aider à leurs et à vous fournir une meilleure qualité de vie, etc. Peu importe ce que vous choisirez comme objectif, l’investissement bien calculé vous aidera à l’atteindre avec succès et efficacité.

  si vous avez l'esprit riche pour investir;

Vous pouvez ouvrir un compte avec à peine 200€. ici

 

 Pour accéder à l’Openbook, il suffit de s’inscrire et de se loguer sur la plate-forme en cliquant ici par exemple. Vous atterrirez sur une page qui ressemble un peu à celle de Facebook et de twitter à la fois: vous l’aurez compris, le cœur de la politique de Etoro, c’est vraiment le trading social.

La page se décompose en plusieurs widgets:

• au centre, vous avez le fil d’actualité. Vous pourrez y trouver toutes les dernières activités des membres. Vous pouvez au choix commenter leur activité, décider de suivre un membre en particulier ou de copier le trade d’un utilisateur en un clic. Si vous prenez une position sur les marchés, vous apparaitrez à votre tour sur ce fil.
• A droite, vous trouverez les utilisateurs d’Etoro classés par résultats. Vous pouvez classer les résultats des membres en affichant le mois en cours, les 3 derniers mois ou les 6 derniers mois. En cliquant sur le nom d’un membre, vous irez sur sa page personnelle. Elle contient quelques infos sur le membre (dont son pays) ses statistiques, ses derniers résultats et ses dernières positions ouvertes et fermées ainsi que le nombre de trades gagnants et perdants initiés par le membre.
  Vous aurez aussi accès à des statistiques très précises comme le nombre de personnes suivant le membre ainsi que le nombre de trades copiés chez ce membre.
• A gauche, vous pourrez soit trouver le lien permettant de référer un ami à ce programme et encaisser à l’occasion la somme de 100 dollars pour ce geste, soit obtenir les liens permettant de télécharger l’application etoro pour votre smartphone.