For companies with European operations, a series of resolutions by the European Central Bank's (ECB) Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell addressed electronic payments management within and to the region, among other things.

At the Next Generation Cards & Payments Conference in Brussels Tumpel-Gugerell outlined a number of goals for 2011 that she said were essential to the success of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)—the EC’s push for standardized payment infrastructure and regulations across the EU. Among the points she cited were the need for improved security and innovation in the online payments markets.

Many CFOs and other finance executives may feel that understanding such IT concepts as search engine optimization (SEO) are not in their remit.

However, particularly for smaller companies where job functions may be less-defined or input from senior management is desirable across the whole gamut of business functions, it makes sense to have a basic understanding of the importance of search engine optimization, and also to know how to implement it in any writing, posting, research, and so on that may end up online.

In a blog Thursday on FinanSer--the Financial Services Club blogsite—commentator Chris Skinner posed the following question: Since payments are becoming so commoditized that it is foreseeable at some point they may become free, what does this do to the role of a bank as an intermediary in the payments business?

Skinner suggests that banks should and are moving towards becoming repositories of information, as they are further disintermediated from the payments space, and as margins disappear for payments processing.

Companies across the US are signalling that they are not happy with proposed new accounting rules that would require them to disclose potential losses from pending class action lawsuits, and increase disclosure on potential liabilities from products and operations.

As many as 140 big name corporates—including Ford Motor, GE, McDonald’s, Google and HP—signed a response to the proposed accounting changes, saying that they oppose the scheme, according to a report in Monday’s FT.

The issue of the Internet's neutrality, a.k.a. net neutrality, was back in the headlines last month, as a result of a proposal developed by Google and Verizon, as Denise Bedell covered in this post. Net neutrality basically means that Internet service providers treat all traffic - from e-commerce orders to spam to emails from your college buddies - the same.

Net neutrality proponents say that's as it should be; that no organization should decide what traffic deserves priority and gets to travel more quickly through the ether. Service providers, on the other hand, say they need some way to manage their networks, lest bandwidth-hogging videos, for instance, crowd out other types of traffic.

HP and Dell on Friday continued their battle royale for 3Par, the data management and cloud computing firm. The deal is the latest in a long string of transactions this summer by big tech firms in their efforts to become even bigger—and move into territory now held by their competitors.

The battle has been raging since the start of last week, when Dell first put in an offer at $18 a share for all outstanding shares of the data storage firm. 3Par accepted. HP came in to the foray this past Monday—offering $24 a share. Dell sneaked in a bid at $24.30 Thursday morning this week, and HP came back that afternoon with a $27 offer.

Without net neutrality there would be no Facebook, no YouTube, no internet 
giants that started in the dorm room of a couple of college kids.

Okay I take that back. Some of the ingenious and daring internet ideas that have changed the world as we know it would still exist, and possibly in the form that we now know. But quite possibly not. 

Google’s agreement to buy ITA Software—which supplies technology to power online flight and ticket price searches—has raised concerns over the neutrality of search engines and how, or if, search platforms should be regulated to ensure that neutrality.

The deal—which has a $700 million price-tag—would enable Google to list travel and ticket prices in response to searches, potentially giving it a big toehold in the online travel market. The question, however, is how the addition of new businesses—such as travel booking and other services—that are tertiary to Google’s primary search function are affecting the independence and neutrality of the search engine platform, and at what point fair competition within those industries is affected.

Google has proved itself to be a major US corporation, but that isn't always a good thing, at least among tech firms. In fact, Google in some ways has reason to regret the loss of its status as a start-up.

The company said in April its first-quarter results jumped 23 percent and the company posted good metrics, with a 7 percent increase in average cost-per-clicks, which fuels sales. But it wasn't enough for many investors. Now the Internet giant is trying to copy Facebook, which surpasses Google in many ways.

In the go-go year before the crisis, only a few companies would seek to turn to government agencies for financing. These included large industrial companies and companies in emerging markets where the political risks precluded them from the international capital markets. Think airlines and turbine makers. But since the crisis, agency finance has had a remarkable renaissance.

Agency finance can take many forms. Its can be direct trade insurance or guarantees by bodies such as US Export Import Bank (US Ex-Im), or Export Credit Guarantee Department in the UK. It can develop into longer project financing for infrastructure deals, especially in emerging markets by bodies such as the World Bank or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.