Quietly Keeping Europe's ATMs Full

In recent days, pundits have asked plenty of theoretical, abstract questions about what a eurozone bank run might look like. Peter McNamara lives with that issue, up close and personal, every day. The reason? After a career as a banker and analyst, he is now executive chairman of NoteMachine, a company that runs ATMs across much of the eurozone. So, with political tensions rising in the region, McNamara and his team are now in a state of high alert, battling to ensure that the ATMs will always be stocked, in case consumers ever panic and rush to grab paper notes. After all, as McNamara recently explained to me in a TV studio, if, during a crisis, cash-laden trucks suddenly arrive at ATMs, that in itself can spark alarm. And if those ATMs actually run out of cash, it is doubly worse. Thus, companies such as his are working to keep the machines constantly full â?? but in a manner the public never sees, or even has reason to think about.