A Dictionary of Finance - podcast cover

A Dictionary of Finance

European Investment Bankplay.acast.com
Allar and Matt work for the EU bank. But they’re not bankers. So they often find themselves wondering just what their super-smart banker colleagues are talking about. Each week they sit down with experts from the European Investment Bank and make them explain words, phrases and concepts frequently used in economics and finance in a way that's understandable, whether you’re a student, a citizen, or a business owner. No jargon, no acronyms--but just about as much fun as a finance podcast can be.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Download Metacast podcast app
Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

Finance law: ‘Yank the bank’ and other legal ploys

We invited European Investment Bank lawyers Maria Cerrato, Tom Nguyen, Kinga Soltész and Matthias Brzezinski together again to reveal some of the legal ruses used when things don’t quite go as planned. We learn what harmless-sounding phrases like ‘to the best of my knowledge after due inquiry’ really mean. And what ‘the data room’ is - a place, typically, with no natural light, a place in which no-one really wants to end up. We find out how to ‘yank the bank’ and what a ‘drop dead clause’ is. Bu...

Aug 20, 201721 min

PPPs: The Secret Life of Infrastructure

A PPP is a public-private partnership. It delivers long-term infrastructure through the private sector. The public sector pays, but only when the infrastructure is available to the public and maintained to the standard set out in the contract. Gabriel García Márquez, the great Colombian writer, said that everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life. The same is true of infrastructure. This episode is about the secret life of infrastructure, because we’re talking abo...

Aug 13, 201719 min

Risk management: How do you know when a swan is black?

An event that carries risk can generate harm or a loss. A certain level of risk has to be accepted by, for example, a bank, in order to generate profit. Risk is calculated by assessing the probability that a borrower will default on its repayments. Did you ever take a calculated risk? Whether you were at the top of a ski slope or invading Yakutsk in a game of “Risk,” you probably have done so. But can you really calculate risk? This episode is about how banks and other financial players tot up t...

Aug 06, 201725 min

Finance law: “Acting reasonably”, and other legal jargon

First: a shout-out to our 7 listeners in Mongolia! Our statistics show we really do have listeners all over the world, and we’re very excited about each one. In this week’s episode, we went on a quest to find the most incredible sounding legal terms that we hear lawyers use in the European Investment Bank , and challenged the lawyers to explain them in a way that wouldn’t make one snooze at a garden party. For example, we will help you understand what the Latin phrases “mutatis mutandis”, “ipsa ...

Jul 30, 201721 min

SMEs: Are you a size S, or a size M?

We’ve all learned about economies of scale in school (and if you were absent that day, this podcast will provide a quick recap on this, as well). So why is everyone talking about financing the small guys, the SME-s, instead? And it’s not just talk either: the European Investment Bank Group is investing a lot of money in SME’s. In this episode of A Dictionary of Finance podcast, Matt and Allar challenged EIB Group’s top SME specialists, Helmut Kraemer-Eis and Pedro Eiras Antunes, and found out th...

Jul 23, 201729 min

Can we interest you in inflation?

Interest rates—you’ve certainly paid them. But why did you pay the particular interest rate you had to pay? Who figures that out, and how? That calculation is related to a lot of other stuff. To the inflation rate—whatever that is. To economic growth—however that comes about. Maybe even to the employment rate—don’t even get me started on the Phillips Curve, which is supposed to show the relationship between unemployment and inflation. If you too don’t know quite what this all means, Allar and Ma...

Jul 16, 201729 min

Start-ups: Unicorns really do exist

Allar and Matt uncover the imaginative names for fast-growing new companies, from unicorns to gazelles, dragons and…cockroaches. A unicorn is a privately held company with a valuation of more than USD 1 billion When a company sells shares to the public, it’s called a dragon if it’s worth more than the entire size of the venture capital fund that first invested in it If you like fairy stories, you’ll enjoy the work of Helmut Krämer-Eis, chief economist of the European Investment Fund . You probab...

Jul 09, 20176 min

Equity and Debt: Can you share your bonds?

Allar and Matt examine the two main ways companies raise money: equity and debt. You'll hear an awful lot about a fictional hairdresser and discover that Allar is really keen on free stuff. But, look, don't worry, the main thing is to learn about equity and debt. So here you go: Equity is often described as “shares,” because you own a share of a company. Potentially you risk all you paid for it, but you also have “unlimited upside”—the better the company performs, the more you can get in return....

Jul 03, 201729 min

Banks: What 'Monopoly' fans don't know about them

What do you think of when you hear the word "Bank?" A basketball bank shot by Michael Jordan? The Bank station on the London Underground where the announcer calls out “Mind the Gap,” or a game of Monopoly? Okay, you probably think of the place where you keep your money. But could you really say what banks do? Banks are central to the economy and to politics. You can’t understand any important political debate unless you know what banks do and how they fit into the overall economy. On A Dictionar...

Jun 09, 201725 min
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast