"Need more help?" says the PayPal page. Another quality control failure....

In or about 2003, I closed our publishing company's account with PayPal because they kept blocking the account. At the time, PayPal wasn't the enormous global powerhouse that it has become. It was, essentially, a bunch of nerds for whom compliance and risk management was a nuisance. When electronic money started to exercise the US government's collective mind, PayPal found that it needed some risk management processes. They didn't do it properly. Then, later, when PayPal expanded into Europe, it migrated our account to its EU operations and put money laundering, etc. risk and compliance in Dublin where they set up systems that were not only rubbish but sent out letters referring to non-existent legislation. But now, a piece of essential third party produced software is pushing us towards at least opening, even if we don't use it, a PayPal account. How hard can it be? Surely they have learned something in...

There is a long line of failures to properly plan before implementation - and of fundamental failure to understand the basics of a business or issue before launching a system.

We need to stand back, to take stock. We need to rethink our entire approach to management especially risk management. It's time to get back to basics.

Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, today set out Hong Kong's stall. Is today's statement an indication of success or a note being of not-quite competitive?