A world without banks: why Barclays and co should be afraid

ALONG with Barclays’ profits figures comes news that the bank will have to cut between 10,000 and 12,000 jobs this year, of which 7,000 will be in the UK. While Barclays is still reeling from the £290m fine for fiddling with the Libor rate, the job cuts raise the spectre of a world in which banks no longer dominate the financial sphere as they do today.

Recently I had a conversation with Peter Merrens, strategy board member at Cisco, which rather shocked me. He laid out for me a vision of a world without banks.