Two banks can't agree on fourth-grade math | Alex Elliott
About this episode
Patrick McKenzie and Alex Elliott discuss the complexities of financial operations and trade reconciliation in banking.
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) is joined by Alex Elliott (@alexpotato), who has spent his career in SRE and operations roles at financial firms ranging from ten-person fintechs to global investment banks, to discuss what the back office actually does all day. They cover the life cycle of a trade: execution, clearing, settlement, and the constant reconciliation between counterparties who don't quite agree on what happened. Alex recounts the Friday afternoon when twenty million shares went out to the street instead of five, and Patrick explains what happens between 4:15 and 4:30 when one bank owes another $36 million and the person who owns that process is on vacation. – Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/two-banks-cant-agree-on-fourth-grade-math/ – Presenting Sponsors: Mercury , MongoDB & Granola Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/ . If meetings consistently leave you with hazy action items and…
Sponsors
Mercury, Granola, MongoDB
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