Z/Yen: Difference between revisions

51°30′54.4″N 0°5′29.1″W / 51.515111°N 0.091417°W / 51.515111; -0.091417

Z/Yen Group

Industry	Consultancy, Think-tank
Founded	1994; 30 years ago (1994)
Headquarters	City of London
Key people	Michael Mainelli Ian Harris Mark Yeandle
Website	www.zyen.com

Z/Yen is a commercial think-tank, consultancy and venture firm headquartered in the City of London. It works in the financial services, technology and voluntary sectors on a range of projects from research to performance review and strategic management. Founded in 1994 and with associates around the world, Z/Yen has developed collaborative projects such as the London Accord, the Global Financial Centres Index, the Global Intellectual Property Index for Taylor Wessing and Taskforce 2000 (the UK industry response to the Millennium Bug).

Z/Yen conducts market research and intelligence. It publishes most of its research freely on its own website.^[1]

Z/Yen is split into 2 pars; Long Finance (which seeks to answer the question "When would we know our financial system is working?” and incorporates The London Accord and the GFCI) for Pro bono work and The Financial Services Club (FSC) which provides networking dinners and events for city professionals.

Since Bitcoin's release in 2009, there has been a considerable amount of interest in the underlying distributed ledger technology (a.k.a. blockchain) which facilitates its transactions. Z/Yen's executive chairman Michael Mainelli, in association with Professor Mike Smith, has been working with mutual distributed ledgers, or MDLs, since the early 90's. Due to this expertise and recent interest in MDLs, Z/Yen shifted much of its research and resources towards this developing technology and community.

In its formative years Z/Yen’s research and consulting included work for British Gas, the London Stock Exchange, the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA, now DSTL and QinetiQ) and Bloomberg, amongst others. Z/Yen played a major part in the founding of Taskforce 2000, the private sector initiative designed to alert people to the Millennium Bug.

In 1996, Z/Yen established the £1.9M Financial Laboratory, an innovative joint venture between BZW (now Barclays Investment Bank), Royal and Sun Alliance, The London Stock Exchange, DERA (now QinetiQ), City University, City University Business School, The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and Silicon Graphics. This project won a £750,000 DTI Foresight Challenge award later that year.

In the late nineties Z/Yen’s not-for-profit sector work became a major part of the business, with extended work for Cancer Research Campaign, BEN, The Children's Society and others, plus significant gains at British Heart Foundation and a major trade union. Other work included undertaking a major pan-European study into the market for OTC derivatives outsourcing.

• In 2001 the company gained significant recognition when a version of its bourse game was played at St James’ Palace as a part of a Marine Stewardship Council event; prizes were presented by HRH The Prince of Wales.

• In January 2003 Z/Yen launched PropheZy – a predictive Dynamic, Anomaly & Pattern Response (DAPR) system, receiving a £45,000 Smart Award from the Department of Trade and Industry. VizZy, a complementary visualisation system for PropheZy, was launched a year later. Benchmarking became a significant section of Z/Yen’s work during this period, with record numbers of investment banks and brokerages participating in 2003.

• In 2005 Z/Yen was appointed by the Institute of Fundraising, with partner Business in the Community, to run the enquiry line and information centre for the Payroll Giving Centre programme funded by the Home Office.

• In 2007 Z/Yen created its flagship Global Financial Centres Index for the City of London Corporation (bringing it in-house in 2010). This year also saw Z/Yen sell its investment banking cost-per-trade benchmarking unit to Aon, and launch the London Accord. This initiative, with the help of over 50 financial service sector contributors, looks to provide an open-source research resource on finance and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

• In 2008 Z/Yen launched a way of measuring the immeasurable, the Global Intellectual Property Index, for the legal firm Taylor Wessing.

• Next, Z/Yen founded the ExtZy game – creating a stockmarket from the internet – and posing the question, “When would we know our financial system is working?” through the Long Finance initiative. Research has included Index-linked carbon bonds, non-monetary trade and Confidence Accounting.^[2]

Towards the end of 2011, Z/Yen decided to expand its international presence by establishing a Swiss office, headed up by Chiara von Gunten in Geneva. Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris also launched their third book, The Price of Fish, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

In 2012 Z/Yen was awarded the Platinum Quality Mark as a result of the staff’s continued contribution to charity through payroll giving. The Price of Fish was awarded the Gold Medal in the Finance, Investment and Economics category of the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

In February 2014, "City Walks: Finance At Your Feet” was published on iBooks.

In 2015, The InterChainZ project develops several implementations of mutual distributed ledgers (a.k.a. blockchain technology) and publishes a video. Additionally, Z/Yen launches Distributed Futures, a senior forum dedicated to technology and disruption, for subjects such as mutual distributed ledgers (a.k.a. blockchain technology) and artificial intelligence.

In 2017, Financial Centre Futures - The Global Financial Centres Index 21 and The Global Financial Centres Index 22 were published in March and September respectively, along with the following special report: Trends And Innovations In Financial Services. Linda Cook joined the Z/Yen Group Board of Directors and Mark Yeandle was appointed Director of Z/Yen Partners. Z/Yen was awarded the Platinum Quality Mark as a result of the staff’s continued contribution to charity through payroll giving.

On the 14th of March 2018, the Global Green Finance Index (GGFI) was launched in Brussels. The GGFI ranks the world’s financial centres according to perceptions of the quality and depth of their green finance offerings. Its second edition is published in September.

Long Finance's Eternal Coin's “Economic Simulation And Control Of Cryptocurrencies” project develops the technical framework for a simulator, supported by two workshops and the publication of a report.

Financial Centre Futures - The Global Financial Centres Index 23 and The Global Financial Centres Index 24 were published in March and September respectively, along with the China Financial Centres Index 10. Z/Yen was also awarded the Diamond Quality Mark as a result of the staff’s continued contribution to charity through payroll giving.

• Clean Business Cuisine: Now and Z/Yen - (2000) ^[3]
• Information Technology for the Not-for-profit Sector - ICSA Publishing (2001) ^[4]
• Expertise: Search and Deploy - (2003) ^[5]
• The Road To Long Finance: A Systems View Of The Credit Scrunch - (2009) (with Bob Giffords)^[6]
• The Price of Fish - Nicholas Brealey Publishing (2011) ^[7]

A regularly updated list of articles can be found in the 'Words' section of the Z/Yen Website.

• Global Financial Centres Index ^[8]
• Global Intellectual Property Index ^[9]
• Global Green Finance Index^[10]

• Official website
• The Economist citation October 2009