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To better understand where the banking industry is heading and how it can thrive in the new environment of converged industries and competition, the IBM Institute for Business Value, in collaboration with Oxford Economics, surveyed 850 banking and financial markets executives across all major geographies and a variety of C-suite roles.

The survey sought answers to three key questions: What impacts are the changing currents around ecosystems, business models and business economics having on banking and other financial services organizations? What strategies are likely to be most successful for banks to adopt over the next few years? What steps can banking leaders adopt today to accelerate their progress toward obtaining a leading competitive position?

Most senior executives surveyed – 72 percent – agree that platform business models – and the ecosystems that underpin them – are disruptive for the banking industry: 70 percent of executives say that platform business models are driving changes in traditional value chains across the industry. 69 percent acknowledge that platforms are disrupting their organization’s own business and operating models.

As many as 79 percent of banking executives globally say that adoption of platform business models will help them achieve sustainable differentiation and competitive advantage with benefits across multiple dimensions. They identify profitability, innovation and access to markets as the top-three areas where platform models can drive advantage.

Visionary banks believe engagement with partners across platforms should increase their commitment to innovation, especially relating to the search for new and more valuable product and service combinations. They realize that radical transformation is required across business and operating models and in the way resources, business processes and technologies are assembled to create value.

Inspection is an activity that controls the outgoing product quality and involves search, detection and measurement or diagnosis. Traditionally, inspection tasks have been allocated to humans. Attempts to automate industrial inspection in order to eliminate errors and alleviate monotony have faced difficulties due to technological limitations and/or prohibitive implementation costs. An occasional compromise is partial automation (hybrid inspection). Reviews published research in manual, hybrid and automated inspection to understand the current research status.

President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.

Graham S. Clarke, TD MA FCA FRSA, financial director of Fairey Holdings for the last four years, has been appointed managing director of its Energy and Military Engineering Division.

Those who move among the people with their eyes open will not doubt that the number of non‐smokers is increasing, but mostly among older adults. Sales of cigarettes, despite the ban on advertising and the grim warning printed on packets, do not reflect this however, which can only mean that those who still smoke are the heavy smokers. This is a bad sign; as is the fact that youngsters, including a high percentage of those at school, openly flaunt the habit. The offence of using tobacco or any other smoking mixture or snuff while handling food or in any food room in which there is open food (Reg. 10(e)), remains one of the common causes of prosecutions under the Food Hygiene Regulations; it has not diminished over the years. The commonest offenders are men and especially those in the butchery trade, fishmongers and stall‐holders, but, here again, to those who move around, the habit seems fairely widespread. Parts of cigarettes continue to be a common finding especially in bread and flour confectionery, but also in fresh meat, indicating that an offence has been committed, and only a few of the offenders end up in court. Our purpose in returning to the subject of smoking, however, is not to relate it to food hygiene but to discuss measures of control being suggested by the Government now that advertising bans and printed health warnings have patently failed to achieve their object.

IF THE Guinness book of records is still watching these columns, I can now tell them that, after all, Mrs Carole Bignell's hope (NLW February p30) that she had established a record by registering her daughter as a library member at the tender age of two weeks must be dashed. Ken Bowden, District Librarian at Bacup, Lanes (where he gets his copy of NLW a little late), writes that not only did one of his neighbours enrol his daughter when she was five days old some years ago, but that Ken's own son entered the world in February 1977 and was enrolled at Bacup on his third day. Any advance on three days?