The CSFI Round-table: Recent Episodes
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Why you should watch: Chile is writing a new Constitution; Colombia and Brazil face deeply polarizing elections. Peru's new(ish) government has seen three cabinets and four finance ministers in six months... And then there's Venezuela and Nicaragua, two essentially failed states. And Argentina - though it got a break from the IMF. And what about Bukele's Bitcoin experiment in El Salvador. Oh, don't forget Mexico... Latin America matters - and it faces a tough year as it recovers from a bad dose of Covid at a time of rising interest rates and supply chain disruption. Two former finance ministers discuss the outlook.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Andrés Velasco is currently dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. He is a former Professor of International Finance at the Kennedy School, who served as Finance Minister in Chile from 2006 to 2010, and was a Presidential candidate in 2013. He subsequently spent four years as a Professor of Practise at Columbia, before coming to London.
Manuel Hinds enjoyed two terms as Finance Minister in El Salvador, winning the Manhattan Institute's Hayek Prize in 2010. In the 1980s, he was a Division Chief at the World Bank in Washington, and was subsequently a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has consulted extensively for the Bank and Fund, and is the author of many books, most recently 'In Defense of Liberal Democracy'.
Why you should watch: The world is changing; societies are changing. But is capitalism changing? And, if it is changing, is it changing in a way that meshes with the broader economic and social changes? This book argues that we are at a tipping point, in which 'financialized capitalism' (in which shareholder value and financial returns rule the roost) is morphing into what the author calls 'political capitalism' - a form of capitalism that reflects the fact that, in the modern world, every corporate decision is a political decision. Some companies get it right; others don't. Those that do will thrive; those that don't will find themselves increasingly out of step with their 'citizen consumers'.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Joe Zammit-Lucia is a man of many parts. Originally a gastro-enterologist (trained at the Royal Free), he has been an 'entrepreneur, an investor, a leadership adviser and a commentator' - also an author of several business books. He has (he says) 'lived and worked in the UK, Germany, France, the US, Spain, the Netherlands and Malta'. He also set up RADIX, a think-tank of the 'radical center', which is based in Amsterdam with many great and good from the UK economic establishment on its various boards. This book, published by Bloomsbury, is out this week.
Explainer: Argentine debt - back to the 80s? With Prof Danny Leipziger (GWU)
Why you should watch: For economists of a certain age, Argentina is the gift that goes on giving. For the IMF, it is a recurring nightmare. And for investment bankers (who actually bought into Argentina's 100-year bond issue in 2017), it ought to be a lesson that they are not as smart as they think they are. Come March, Buenos Aires is supposed to repay US$45 billion to the IMF. It won't happen - not least because the country's total reserves are only around US$35 billion. But will Argentina risk arrears with the Fund? Or will the Fund blink? This brief Explainer explores the options - another currency board, dollarisation, a technocratic administration? Or just more of the same old same old muddling through?
Danny Leipziger is Professor of Practice in International Business at George Washington University in DC, and MD of the University's Growth Dialogue. He is a former V-P at the World Bank, where he headed the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network, having previously been chief economist for the Southern Cone region. He was educated at CCNY and at Brown, from which he has a PhD in economics. He is the author of around a dozen books, and many articles on debt and development.
Explainer: What's going on with El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment? With Ramiro Blazquez (BancTrust)
Why you should watch: On June 9 last year, President Nayib Bukele announced that Bitcoin will be legal tender in El Salvador - a country which had abandoned its own currency a few years before, in favour of the US dollar. El Salvador is not exactly an economic powerhouse - nor is it a model of fiscal probity. Indeed, with a debt ratio of around 90%, its finances were already under stress. So, what has happened - and what chance does Bukele have of raising the billion dollar BTC bond that a little-known consultancy, Blockstream, is promoting on his behalf? And how do the IMF and the Biden Administration view developments in a country that, after all, is the source of a significant proportion of the Central American migrants who have become such a potent political issue in the US?
Ramiro Blazquez is head of research and strategy at BancTrust & Co in Buenos Aires. He previously worked with the IMF in Argentina, and was a Chevening Scholar in the UK before spending ten years with HSBC as an Andean economist and as a Senior Economist on Latin America. He is associated with Canning House in London and with Torcuato Di Tella University in BA.
Web 3.0: An Explainer, with Martin Walker, Center for Evidence Based Management
Why you should watch: Web 3 (or Web 3.0) is as powerful a buzzword these days as DeFi - and it is just as hard to pin down. What does it mean? How does it differ from Web 2.0 or Web 1.0 - or the Internet as we know and love it? Martin Walker tries to explain the history of the term, which he sees primarily as a marketing ploy, and how it is closely related to promotion of the Ethereum blockchain. Andrew Hilton rolls his eyes - but persists in the belief that there must be something there, if only he was smart enough to understand it.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Martin Walker is currently head of product management for securities finance and collateral management at Broadridge Financial Solutions. He was formerly involved with product development at the R3 Consortium and a strategy adviser to HSBC. Before that, he worked in the City with Dresdner Kleinwort, and RBS. He has an MSc from Imperial in computer science.
'The Future of Money: How the digital revolution is transforming currencies and finance'. An interview with the author of this important new book, Eswar Prasad.
Why you should watch: This new book (published by Harvard UP) tackles four big issues: What impact the rapid growth of FinTech is having (and where it is likely to be most successful); whether Bitcoin and blockchain will ever live up to the hype; why central banks, large and small, are placing their bets on CBDCs; and what all of this means for the global financial system - and for the dollar's hegemony. Prof. Prased is strongly supportive of FinTech, particularly in the EM space. He is also strongly supportive of blockchain's potential - albeit more than a bit sceptical about Bitcoin itself. As for CBDCs, he sees them as pretty much inevitable. That said, the combination is still unlikely to overturn a global financial system that is based on the institutions and rule of law that underpin the US dollar. For anyone who really wants to understand FinTech, DeFi, the world of cryptos and CBDCs, this is the place to start.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Economics at Cornell in Ithaca, NY and a senior fellow at Brookings in Washington, DC. He is a former chief of financial studies and chief of the China division at the IMF. Originally educated in Madras (now Chennai), he also studied at Brown University, and received his PhD from the University of Chicago.
'Cogs and Monsters: What economics is and what it should be'. An interview with the author, Prof. Diane Coyle
Why you should watch: Diane Coyle has spent the last 25 years (since publication of her first book, The Weightless World) re-thinking economics - what it is as a discipline, where its limitations are, how we should use its insights, and how it could be brought more into line with the world as we actually know it. She has been a major force behind key changes in the academic curriculum, and has been at the forefront of efforts to broaden the interdisciplinary nature of economic policy-making. As someone who has been actively involved in UK competition policy, she has also had the opportunity to see first-hand just how difficult it is to change an institutional mindset. Her latest book is both a checklist of progress made and of the problems that still remain, and a powerful plea for a wholesale re-engineering of the discipline to bring it into line with the fundamental changes that digitalisation has wrought.
Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge, a post she took on in 2018 having previously been Professor of Economics at Manchester. She was educated at Oxford and Harvard, from which she received her PhD. After a spell in HMTreasury, she joined the private sector, eventually moving into journalism, with the Investors Chronicle and the Independent. She is a former member of the Competition Commission and a Vice-chair of the BBC Trust, as well as a senior independent member of the ESRC Council. She is also the MD of an independent consultancy, Enlightenment Economics.
Why you should watch: Coinbase made US$1.6 billion in the second quarter, up from US$32 million year-on-year. Binance and FTX (which has just moved its HQ from Hong Kong to the Bahamas) are on track for a billion bucks - and FTX alone is now valued at US$25 billion. Madness? Or is there something solid behind these mega-numbers? And what do regulators think? The FT's currency guru gives her thoughts.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panelist:
Eva Szalay - Hungarian by birth - is the currency correspondent at the FT, which she joined three years ago. She was previously Editor of FX Week, and before that was a reporter at Dow Jones. She was educated at Queen Mary, University of London.
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'Trillions: How a band of Wall St renegades invented the index fund...' A discussion with the author of this new book, Robin Wigglesworth, and with Charlotte Ransom and Elroy Dimson.
Why you should watch: The FT's global finance correspondent, Robin Wigglesworth, has just published an important book on the origins of index investing, passive investing, ETFs - call it what you will - and on the way it has revolutionised personal finance in the US and globally. It is not 'ETFs for dummies'; it is a narrative with heroes and villains - from academia, from second tier brokerages, and from the equivalent of the family garage. Wigglesworth is not starry-eyed; there are problems - including the new power of the raters, the proliferation of niche/themed ETFs, the special issues around bond ETFs and the sheer size of the market. But there is no doubt that the savings to customers from the shift from active to passive investment strategies have been massive - and that is likely to continue.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Robin Wigglesworth is the FT's global finance correspondent, based in Oslo, and its US markets editor. He is a former capital markets correspondent and Gulf correspondent for the FT, as well as a former Nordic correspondent for Bloomberg.
Charlotte Ransom has been the CEO of Netwealth Investments since she co-founded it seven years ago. She was previously a partner at Goldman Sachs, having begun her career at JP Morgan. Netwealth's pitch is simple: 'Meeting your investment needs at a fraction of the industry cost.'
Elroy Dimson is chairman of the Centre for Endowment Asset Management at Cambridge's Judge School, as well as a member of the Gonville & Caius investment committee. He is also Chairman of the Advisory Board at FTSE Russell and an Emeritus Professor at LBS, where he spent much of his distinguished academic career.
Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam
The author, Vivek Ramaswamy, talks to the CSFI’s Jane Fuller
Why you should watch: Ramaswamy’s critique of the “Woke industrial complex” covers the self-serving do-goodery of big business, its unholy alliance with government and the need to separate capitalism from democracy. He takes a convincing swipe at “The Silicon Leviathan” and suggests some remedies – other than break-up. He believes that Wokeness is like a religion and should be treated as such, including protecting heretics. He ends his combative contribution to free speech with a plea for Americans to respect each other’s views – e pluribus unum.
Vivek Ramaswamy is chairman and founder of Roivant Sciences, a biotech business. He has also co-founded a technology company and been a partner at an investment firm. He grew up in Ohio and is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School.
'The Great Covid Panic: What happened, why and what to do next?' An interview with the co-author of this new book, Prof Paul Frijters
Why you should watch: Paul Frijters is one of a small but important band of wellbeing economists who are deeply sceptical of the global response to the Covid pandemic - and deeply concerned that we lack the institutional (and psychological) infrastructure to take a more rational approach when the next pandemic emerges. His work focuses on the damage that lockdowns did - not just to the global economy (and particularly to the poorest amongst us), but to everyone's psychological and social well-being. The evidence for lockdowns was, in his view, always shaky - and, indeed, 'the science' had been adamant right up until after the pandemic struck that lockdowns were not the way to go. But then something happened; governments lost their nerve, the scientific establishment split - and the line of least resistance was a policy of comprehensive lockdown that (in the authors' view) did massive damage. This book - published by the Brownstone Institute, and co-written with Prof Gigi Foster and Michael Baker - is a seriously argued corrective to the conventional narrative that masks, social distancing, isolation and vaccines are the way forward, and that the inevitable economic pain is worth it.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Paul Frijters is Professor of Wellbeing Economics at LSE. From 2016 to 2019, he was associated with the Centre for Economic Performance; he is now a member of the Department of Social Policy. Prior to joining the faculty at LSE, he taught at the University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. His PhD is from the University of Amsterdam. He is also a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labour Economics in Germany.
10-minute Explainer: What the insurance industry can do for climate change, with Ekhosuehi Iyahen (Insurance Development Forum)
Why you should watch: The IDF is a public/private partnership, involving the UN, the World Bank and private insurers, with a mandate to 'build greater resilience against disasters and to help achieve the UN Global 2030 Agenda'. There is a bit of fluff in there, but it is clearly doing good work with the most vulnerable countries (the so-called V20) on both catastrophe insurance for sudden disasters (hurricanes etc) and for 'slow onset' problems like drought in the Sahel. It is also in the vanguard of building ex ante resilience, not least through better data collection and through Covid-induced 'risk literacy'. It is part of the UN's Net Zero Insurance Alliance, which has pledged to bring insurance and reinsurance portfolios in line with net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
Ekhosuehi Iyahen was appointed Secretary-general of the Insurance Development Forum in 2018, having previously worked with the African Risk Capacity Agency in Jo'burg and with the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. She was educated at the University of the West Indies, LSE and the Kennedy School at Harvard, and was a Rockefeller Fellow at Bellagio.
Why you should watch: Janine Hirt took over from Charlotte Crosswell as CEO of Innovate Finance a couple of months ago, having previously been COO - a role she took on in 2017. It will be a tough act to follow. IF is the umbrella body representing the UK FinTech sector - but it also sees itself as 'the voice of global FinTech'. It represents companies like 10X, Seedrs and Zopa. But it also represents Barclays and Santander - as well as Citi and PayPal. That said, its key focus has to be the UK - attracting finance into the FinTech space, promoting the UK as a FinTech hub, liaising with regulators and government, and doing what it can to help UK FinTech 'scale'. IF was the co-secretariat for the Kalifa Report, and much of its work is currently based on the Report's recommendations - as well as those of the parallel review of UK listing requirements.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Janine Hirt is an American, British, Swiss and German national, who speaks English, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Phew... She was educated at Boston College and LSE, and joined IF in 2015, becoming COO in 2017 and succeeding Charlotte Crosswell as CEO earlier this year. Before coming to the UK, she worked with the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce in NY, moving to London to be Acting Head of Corporate Relations at Chatham House. Her website says she is 'passionate' about 'a more democratic, transparent and financial services sector for all' - and this interview makes clear that she means it.
Why you should watch: Barney Reynolds's latest review focuses on the Treasury's strategy paper on MIFID2, the proposed review of the prospectus regime (post-Hill Review) and the latest Treasury paper on Solvency2 - plus a discussion of how/whether the UK should open up more to cryptos in the wake of the crackdown on Binance, and thoughts on what we could/should do to reinvigorate securitization. While the panel didn't agree on everything, there was a sense (a) that the City was 'getting back to normal' (and starting to find ways around some of the post-Brexit problems); and (b) that, just maybe, we could risk a more radical approach to regulatory reform.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Barney Reynolds is global head of the financial services industry group at Shearman & Sterling. He has written extensively on Brexit. and on the post-Brexit regulatory regime - including, in February, a paper on Restoring UK Law: Freeing the UK's global financial market.
Michael Wainwright is a partner in Dentons's London-based financial services practise, specialising in retail financial services law. He was previously a partner at Eversheds.
James Sproule has been chief economist at Handelsbanken since May 2020. Before that, he spent a year in Downing St as senior adviser to the PM. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute and chief economist at the Institute of Directors. Before he went into the City, he spent several years in the Navy.
Whither Europe? Interviewing author David Harley on his recent book Matters of Record
Why you should watch: David Harley was, for many years, at the heart of the European bureaucracy - the face in the photo right behind the Prime Minister or the President of the day, who had to make sure that the machinery of the EU worked. He has now published his diaries - Matters of Record: Inside European Politics. They make fascinating reading; a view of EU politics from an angle that one doesn't normally see. Retired now, David is still close to the 'beating heart' of Europe, and offers thoughts on Britain's evolving relationship and on the continuing points of friction. Denis MacShane (a former Europe Minister) shares his commitment to Europe (he has now taken Irish citizenship), and offers his own thoughts.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
David Harley was deputy Secretary-general at the European Parliament for a decade. He is (in his own words) 'a well-travelled, observant and seasoned European public servant'. In a long Brussels career, David (who is a Brit, currently living in London) was also Secretary-general of the Socialist Group in the Parliament, and close to the Labour Party leadership.
Denis MacShane is the former MP for Rotherham, and Europe Minister under Tony Blair. He is also the author of several books on Europe - including his best-seller, Brexiternity.
Why you should watch: With the scale of financial markets dwarfing the resources of governments, companies and those who invest in them cannot escape a central role in funding the changes needed to save the planet. In an interview with the CSFI, Anne Simpson, an international leader on governance and investment strategy, explains how finance can be harnessed to re-allocate capital towards sustainable wealth creation. The innovations she lays out include valuing human and natural capital, and finding ways to finance biodiversity. Many more ideas are explored in a book entitled, ‘The Financial Ecosystem’, of which Anne is a co-author.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Anne Simpson is the (British-born) Director of Board Governance and Strategy, at CalPERS in California. She is also a member of the Senior Advisory Board at the Center for Responsible Business in the Haas School at Berkeley. She was listed as one of the 100 Top Women in US Finance by Barron's in 2020. She has written several books on corporate governance and sustainable investing.
Why you should watch: 'Without payments, money doesn't work' - that is the message of this new book (published on July 1, by Elliott & Thompson) by two former senior executives at SWIFT, which begins as a (highly readable) trawl through the early-modern history of cheques and cards and cash, and which chronicles the development of both retail/consumer payments and the wholesale payments industry as it has opened up in the increasingly digital world. How we pay is as fundamental as what we pay for, and this book really does open the lid on how the plumbing of the financial system operates. It also looks at the social implications - the impact on the digitally disenfranchised and the less affluent. It looks at the US as the initial market leader, at Europe as a challenger with a goal to set global standards, and at China and India as the big disrupters.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Gottfried Leibbrandt is the former CEO of SWIFT. He is currently a non-exec at CLS Group and a senior adviser at McKinsey. He is also a Board member at Yes.com. He was educated at university in Amsterdam, Stanford (from which he got his MBA) and Maastricht (PhD).
Natasha de Terán is the former head of corporate affairs at SWIFT, where she spent seven years, having held the same role at LCH. She is also a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel and the Payment Systems Regulator Panel, and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment. She is a former journalist and adviser to the European Commission and ESMA.
Geopolitics after the pandemic: A tour d'horizon of global threats, with Prof Joe Nye (Harvard)
Why you should watch: The G7, the NATO Summit, Biden's tete-a-tete with Merkel next month in DC... Global geopolitics have seldom been so febrile. Other world leaders may be ecstatic that they don't have to deal with (or work around) Trump. But even with the US back on board as a full member of the Western alliance, it is far from plain sailing. What to do about China - a rising power in an unstable region? What to do about Russia - a declining power with the ability to make trouble in Europe, the Middle East and in cyberspace? And will the old certainties hold? Does the 'special relationship' still mean anything - besides a photo op on a beach? Plus, importantly, what will the manifest failure of the 'rich' countries to solve the problems the Covid pandemic is causing in the 'poor' world do to geopolitics going forward? One thing one can say with confidence: Covid is not over - at least, for half the world.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Prof Joseph Nye is a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Harvard's Kennedy School - of which he is a former Dean. He is also chairman of the US branch of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the US Foreign Policy Board and a former Assistant Secretary of State for International Security. He is one of the most distinguished international relations scholars of the last fifty years, the source of much talk about 'hard' and 'soft' power, and the author of many important books - including 'Do Morals Matter? Presidents and foreign policy from FDR to Trump' - which he published last year. His views are well worth a listen.
Why you should watch: The UK (and most other advanced countries) have made very ambitious commitments to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 or earlier -commitments enshrined in the Paris Accords, and likely to be reaffirmed (or even advanced) at COP26 in November. Are the targets realistic? There is certainly a huge amount of activity at the level of corporates - and even at the level of individual investors. And pressure for change, political and social, is increasing all the time - even if the economic costs are not always fully appreciated. But what about the EMs - China in particular? This discussion covers everything from the G7 to emissions trading, transition fuels, biodiversity, the impact on farming, deglobalisation and border adjustment taxes. A must-watch...
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
The Rt Hon Philip Dunne has been MP for Ludlow since 2005. He is a former Minister of State for Health, and is currently chairman of the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee.
Chris McHugh is the founding director of the LIBF's Centre for Sustainable Finance. He is a former Visiting Lecturer at Cambridge's Judge Business School, and a former banker (with HSBC).
Alice Ross is deputy news editor at the Financial Times. She is a former editor of Trade Secrets and FT Wealth, as well as Frankfurt bureau chief. Her book, 'Investing to save the planet', was published by Penguin last November.
Why you should watch: Andy Haldane counts... He is one of the few economists or central bankers who can genuinely move markets. Here, he offers his views on the current state of monetary and fiscal policy, the dangers of inflation, the impact of the pandemic on inequality and on the possibility of a 'kinder, gentler' form of capitalism - which might include more scope for industrial policy. Plus, FinTech and the role of a post-Covid, post-Brexit City - as well as his own agenda for the new role at the RSA.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Andy Haldane is Chief Economist and Executive Director for monetary analysis and statistics at the Bank of England, which he joined in 1989. He is also a member of the Financial Policy Committee and the Basel Committee, a Trustee of the National Numeracy campaign, chair of the government's Industrial Strategy Council and co-founder of Pro Bono Economics. He was educated at the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick, and is the author of more than 70 articles on economics and finance. Later this year he will take up a new role as CEO of the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, better known as the RSA.
Why you should watch: Antony Jenkins is the Founder and Executive Chairman of 10x Future Technologies (or 10x). 10x, a London-based FinTech, “aims to transform banking… with [its] next-generation cloud-native technology platform.” It is backed by Oliver Wyman, Nationwide Building Society, and Ping An. We discuss cloud computing (and its role in financial services), the decline in branches, as well as Antony’s thoughts on a range of topics – including the blockchain, crypto, and China. Covid has already accelerated digitisation - so, what happens next? Listen on Spotify, or watch the recording here, to find out.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) and Leighton Hughes (Tech lead, CSFI)
Antony Jenkins is the Founder and Executive Chairman of 10x Future Technologies, a FinTech he founded in 2016. He is a former Group CEO of Barclays, a position he held from 2012 until 2015. In April 2021, he was appointed to the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Committee. He is also Group Chairman of Currencies Direct, a board member of Blockchain, Board Director for Fannie Mae, and is the departing Chair of the UK’s Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. He was educated in PPE at the University of Oxford, and holds an MBA from Cranfield.
Why you should watch: Martin Gilbert built Aberdeen into a global investment management powerhouse. He now chairs Revolut, one of the fastest-growing FinTechs in the world, as well as AssetCo - a newish vehicle aimed primarily at the SME market. He is also a director of Glencore, which gives him a front-row seat of the climate change saga. As someone who ranked 18th in a list of 895 'best-performing' global corporate CEOs, his views are worth listening to on investment (in all its forms), on where FinTech is headed and on the challenges ESG issues pose.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI), Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI) and Leighton Hughes (Tech lead, CSFI)
Martin Gilbert was 'born in Malaysia, educated in Aberdeen, is married with three kids, and enjoys golf, sailing and skiing'. He also co-founded Aberdeen Asset Management and built it into one of the world's largest independent asset managers. He is now chairman of Revolut Ltd, Toscafund, and AssetCo, the senior independent director at Glencore and chairman of the OGTC in Aberdeen. He is also a former chairman of the PRA's Practitioner Panel and a former member of the MAS's International Advisory Panel.
Nemat Shafik (or Baroness Shafik, as she is now) follows in the footsteps of another distinguished Director of the LSE, William Beveridge, in putting forward a comprehensive programme for a new 'social contract', covering everything from childcare to health to work to the environment to taxation and to care of the elderly and inter-generational conflicts. Based on the opportunities for radical change opened up by the GFC, the Covid pandemic and the widespread feeling that politics are ripe for change, she offers an astonishingly broad-ranging set of ideas pulled from best practise around the world. Can it happen? Well, maybe - note Biden's American Families Plan and the lifetime learning credit in the latest Queen's Speech. The direction of travel is clear.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Nemat ('Minouche') Shafik had had an astonishing journey. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, she emigrated with her family to America, was educated in the US (at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), in Egypt (at AUC) and in the UK (at the LSE and at St Antony's, Oxford, where she got her DPhil). She was the youngest-ever VP at the World Bank, a Permanent Secretary at DFID, Deputy MD at the IMF and a Deputy Governor at the BofE, before being appointed to run the London School of Economics in 2017. She was made a Dame in 2015, and a Life Peer in 2020. She has British, American and Egyptian nationality.
Dambisa Moyo: An interview with the best-selling economist on her forthcoming book
Why you should watch: Dambisa Moyo is famous. She was on Oprah Winfrey's Power List, she stars at Davos, at Bilderberg, at Ambrosetti - and she is also a serious economist, with a DPhil from St Antony's to go with her MPA from Harvard and her MBA from American. She also has four NYT best-sellers behind her - including 'Dead Aid', which introduced the world to evidence-based development economics. She now has a new book coming out - and it is a big break from her past. Entitled 'How Boards Work', it is a distillation of the lessons she has learned from a decade as a serial corporate Board member at, inter alia, 3M, Chevron, Barclays, Conde Nast and Oxford University's Investment Committee. On the one hand, it is a defence of capitalism; on the other, it is a plea for reform, and for more forward-thinking at the top of the corporate pyramid. Jane Fuller and Andrew Hilton pop the questions; she answers them.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director), CSFI)
Dambisa Moyo came to prominence with her first book, 'Dead Aid', which was an attack on conventional pieties about development. She followed that up with 'How the West was Lost', 'China's Race for Resources' and 'Edge of Chaos'. Originally from Zambia, she has a DPhil from Oxford, spent two years at the World Bank and eight at Goldman Sachs. Recently married, she has latterly forged a very successful career as a Board director for major corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Interviewing John Glen MP (Economic Secretary to the Treasury): The agenda for the CityWhy you should watch: The City Minister's agenda is a full one. It includes the future of London as a FinTech centre after the Kalifa Review, implementation of the listings proposals made by Lord Hill, the new push on sustainable finance ahead of COP26 - and, of course, how to protect the UK's financial services industry post-Brexit and post-Covid. This interview touches on most of those issues - and a few more.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
John Glen MP has represented Salisbury for the Conservatives since 2010 A former PPS to the then-Chancellor, Philip Hammond, he became Economic Secretary to the Treasury (and City Minister) in 2018. He is a former management consultant, with Accenture, who has also worked with his family firm in the horticultural business. He was educated at Mansfield College, Oxford.
Why you should watch: Post-Kalifa, post-Hill, post-DMU, post-Budget, post-Brexit, post-Covid... so much has taken place over the past few months. KPMG's quarterly tech monitor shows a 7-year high in optimism around short-term growth prospects among start-ups, and there has been a lot of good news (the continuation of the Future Fund, the FCA's scale-box, to name just two). But, what are the concerns? Three top issues coming out of the discussion include: (1) the need for a renewed focus on early-stage, "first cheque" start-ups, (2) with the Seedrs-Crowdcube merger squashed, what will the emergent Digital Markets Unit (borne out of the CMA) look like?, (3) how we can make a post-Brexit immigration system effective? An informative and entertaining discussion; we speak with two influential figures in the tech space.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Dom Hallas is the executive director at the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) – which he joined in January 2018 after a year at DExEU. Before, he worked on innovation strategies at Bloomberg Philanthropies, and (in the more distant past) for Greg Mulholland MP. Dom is a member of UK's Digital Economy Council.
Alex Fitzgerald is CEO and founder of Cuckoo, a young start-up making waves in the telco sector. Alex was previously at Hanbury Strategy, and HMT.
Why you should watch:
Gavin Oldham has spent a long career in the City promoting wider share ownership and more responsible capitalism - particularly focusing on young people from deprived communities, including children in care. He was a driving force behind child trust funds and behind PFEG. Having sold The Share Centre to Interactive Investor last year, he is branching out - as one wag put it, 'going the whole Piketty'. The Share Foundation is currently working with Cambridge to set up a programme on egalitarian capitalism, and he himself is pressing for Big Tech companies to reward customers with equity. All very ambitious stuff - but a (fairly) logical extension of his earlier interests. He doesn't get an entirely easy ride in this video from his friends at UKSA, but there is no doubt that this is an area where there is plenty of room for radical thought.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Gavin Oldham is chairman and founder of the Share Foundation, the aims of which are to relieve poverty among young people and to advance their education so as to encourage self-sufficiency. He is also the founder of Share Radio and of The Share Centre, which he sold to II in 2020. Before establishing The Share Centre, he played a major role in democratising UK share ownership by setting up Barclayshare.
Malcolm Hurlston is the interim chair of the UK Shareholders' Association. He is a former chairman of the Student Loans Company, and the founder of the UK's consumer credit counselling services.
John Hunter is the former chairman of UKSA, and presently a director.
Sue Milton is the external relations director at UKSA, and an authority on corporate governance.
Why you should watch:
In 2019, Prof Dasgupta was commissioned by the Chancellor to prepare a report on biodiversity, and what we can do to reverse or ameliorate an alarming acceleration in biodiversity losses. The result was published in February: a 610 page volume, which goes far beyond any previous work in this crucial area. Its recommendations - to be discussed at CBP/COP 15 in May and COP26 in November - are radical and comprehensive. Were they to be implemented, they would change the way we think about economics and finance/accounting, and the way we measure development. Prof Dasgupta explains his thinking, with the chairman of the Green Finance Initiative and the CEO of the RSPB.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Sir Partha Dasgupta is Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at Cambridge, a Fellow of St John's College, and of both the Royal Society and the British Academy. His Review was commissioned in March 2019 and delivered in February 2021.
Sir Roger Gifford was the 685th Lord Mayor of London in 2012-13. He is now an Alderman for Cordwainers' Ward in the City, as well as SEB's senior banker in the UK and Vice-chair of the Association of Foreign Banks in London. He was commissioned by the UK government in 2017 to head an independent task force on Green Finance - which led to the Green Finance Initiative, of which he is now chairman.
Rebecca Speight is CEO of the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds - which, among other things, manages reserves of approximately 140,000 ha in the UK. She joined the RSPB in 2019, from the Woodland Trust, of which she was also CEO.
Why you should watch: A couple of weeks ago, the long-awaited review of London's listing requirements by our former EU Commissioner, Lord (Jonathan) Hill, was published - to a generally positive reception from the Exchanges, the press and most independent commentators. The government now has to follow up on it - and on the recommendations of the Kalifa Report, which is also part of the longer-term strategy for the UK's financial services sector. Three experts - one each from the London Stock Exchange and the Financial Times, plus a leading independent analyst - examine Hill's proposals, add their own recommendations and discuss the challenges facing London.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Marcus Stuttard is the Head of Primary Markets at the LSEG, and Head of AIM, the Exchange's growth market for SMEs.
Andrew Smithers is the founder of Smithers & Co, which he set up in 1989, having previously run SG Warburg's asset management business. He is also a prolific author, most recently of Productivity and the Bonus Culture - a powerful attack on the incentive system in contemporary capitalism.
Jonathan Guthrie is the City Editor at the Financial Times (of which he is an Associate Editor) and Head of Lex, which focuses on UK companies.
Why you should watch: This is not the CSFI's usual territory - but technology certainly is, and what one of the UK's senior financial figures feels about where technology is leading our children is genuinely important. Bob Wigley has spoken with hundreds of millennials and GenZers, and has produced a book which (IMHO) is pretty damn terrifying in terms of what it says about how young people use social media, how they interact with it, how it uses them, and how it essentially isolates them from anyone outside their age cohort. It makes uncomfortable reading for a libertarian, but maybe there is no alternative to tighter control of the platforms and some sort of industry regulator on the Ofcom model. The UK's On-line Harms Bill is currently wending its way through Parliament; this book is mandatory reading for both supporters and opponents.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Bob Wigley is Chairman of UK Finance, of Vesta Global Holdings and of Bink, as well as a NED at a number of other tech and non-tech firms. He is a former Chairman of Victoria Beckham Ltd, a former ED of Royal Mail, a former member of the BofE's Court, and, of course, a former Chair of Merrill Lynch Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Said, an Honorary Fellow at Judge, an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Queensland, and an important supporter of his alma mater, the University of Bath. A man of many parts.
Why you should watch:
Beijing has committed to reach peak emissions before 2030, to increase the role of non-fossil fuels from 15% to 20% of total energy use by 2025, and to net carbon neutrality by 2060. But, last year, it had three times more new coal-fired power capacity than the rest of the world combined. Are its commitments realistic? And why was the latest Five-year Plan so unambitious? Are Western governments right to be skeptical, given the very different priorities in what is a highly decentralized system?
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI).
Panelists:
'Rhea' Yuzu Zhang is a research economist at the Bank of China in London, with a PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham. Her speciality is China's manufacturing sector.
Yan Qin is a lead analyst at Refinitiv, based in Norway, and a Research Associate at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Her speciality is the carbon market. She has an MA from Fudan University and a PhD from the University of Oslo.
Rodrigo Zeidan is an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU's Shanghai campus, and a Senior Scholar at NYU's Center for Sustainable Business. He is also a columnist for Folha de Sao Paulo. His PhD is from the University of Rio de Janeiro.
Why you should watch: Unemployment is a huge political and social issue. Do we measure it properly? Do we have the right policies in place to minimise it - and to help those most affected? And just who are most affected? It clearly hits the young (and their life chances) especially hard - as it does non-white Brits. But Covid-related unemployment has also hit areas (and demographics) that had actually been doing better than most pre-lockdown, in particular, London and the self-employed. Looking ahead, the labour market may be recovering, but will the most dynamic sectors actually recover at all?
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jonathan Athow is the Deputy National Statistician and D-G for economic statistics at the Office of National Statistics in Newport. He is a former chief economist at HMRC, who joined the Treasury in 1997.
Andy Chamberlain is Director of Policy at the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-employed, which was set up in 1999 to protect the self-employed. He was previously a Parliamentary researcher for Michael Jack, MP.
Dylan Buckley is co-founder of DirectlyApply, which was launched in November 2020 and describes itself as 'the world's leading job discovery platform'.
Why you should watch: Two years ago, a team led by Harvard's Jason Furman published a report, written for the UK government, entitled 'Unlocking Digital Competition'. It made a number of recommendations for changes to UK competition policy, most of which have been accepted - though not all have yet been implemented. In the meantime, Europe and the US have also launched important initiatives in this area - and there are the beginnings of a global regulatory framework. Prof. Furman and Dessi Savova discuss the various approaches being followed around the world - and what impact they are likely to have on the shape of the BigTech industry.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jason Furman is Professor of Practise at Harvard's Kennedy School, focusing on economic policy. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington. He is a former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, and has advised Democratic Presidential candidates from Al Gore to Joe Biden.
Dessislava Savova is a Partner at Clifford Chance, a member of the Partnership Council and co-ordinator of the firm's Continental European Technology Group. She has a special interest in data, cyber and AI.
Why you should watch: Gillian Tett's role at the FT is to identify issues before they break cover - and then to tackle them in a way that challenges the tenets of conventional finance. She made her name by spotting the warning signs of the GFC, and since then has broadened her field to cover management, ESG issues, tech and the political challenges posed by populism, elitism and inequality - all seen through the lens of a professional anthropologist who just happens to be a star editor at the FT. This discussion is based around her latest book, Anthro-vision: A new way to see business and life - due out in June.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Gillian Tett is chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large for the US Financial Times, of which she was previously managing editor. She is a former deputy head of Lex and Tokyo bureau chief at the FT, as well as the author of three best-selling business books and a Governing Board member of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. She currently writes a column for the FT Weekend Magazine, and has helped the FT build its presence in the ESG world with Moral Money. She has a PhD from Cambridge in social anthropology, writing her dissertation on Tajik wedding rituals.
Why you should watch: Two committed Blockchain enthusiasts/entrepreneurs go head-to-head with a sceptic from the FT, in a context provided by Switzerland's recent passage of a DLT Bill designed to permit introduction of DLT-based securities represented or issued on a Blockchain network. Switzerland is home to around 130 Blockchain/DLT startups in the banking infrastructure, investment management and payments space, and is clearly positioning itself as a leading jurisdiction for what it sees as a decentralized financial future. Not much meeting of minds, but plenty to chew on. With an introduction by the Ambassador of Switzerland to the UK, Alexandre Fasel.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Tim Grant is CEO and Head of Business at SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) in Switzerland. He is a former CEO of Blockchain start-up, DrumG, and a former head of the research lab at R3. He began his career with UBS, in 1992. He was educated at Cambridge and the University of London.
Mathias Imbach is CEO (and co-founder) of Sygnum, described as 'the world's first digital asset bank'. He was formerly a private wealth manager for Ratan Tata, and before that was with Bain & Co. He has a PhD from the University of St Gallen and an MSc from LSE.
Jemima Kelly is a reporter at the FT and at FT Alphaville, which she joined in 2018 from Reuters. Her Twitter feed says she is known for 'snark', which seems fair a comment. She was educated at King's College, London.
Why you should watch: Forget the title... This is really three books: it covers the conflict between a dollar-based system and a multi-currency one, the link between 'unfettered' capital flows and financial instability, and the rising influence of China as the US withdraws. It is also, in part, an attack on 'financialisation' and a call for renewed international economic cooperation, but the discussion also throws in the role of Germany within the EU and the chequered history of UK economic policy since the pre-Thatcher years.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Paola Subacchi is Professor of International Economics and chair of the Advisory Board at Queen Mary University London. She is a former director of research at Chatham House.
Charles Dumas is Director and Chief Economist at TS Lombard, which he joined (when it was Lombard St Research) in 1998. He was previously with JPMorgan in London and NY, and with The Economist. He is the author of several books, including 'Globalization Fractures'.
Warwick Lightfoot is Head of Economics and Social Policy at Policy Exchange. He is a former special adviser to three UK Chancellors, a Treasury economist at RBS and Economics Editor at The European. His books include 'Sorry, We Have No Money: Britain's economic problem'.
Why you should watch: There is a new cast of characters in DC when it comes to financial regulation - from Yellen at the Treasury, to Gensler at the SEC, to Chopra at the CFPB. And there are important changes in the Senate, where Sherrod Brown will head the Banking Committee. Does this mean 'progressives' have won? Our panel is not convinced, but there is no doubt that climate-related risk is going to play a much bigger role, that social justice issues are high on the agenda ('fair lending', not 'risk-based lending'), that there will be pressure for higher capital ratios on larger banks when the Covid crisis is over, and that there will be more attention paid to non-bank institutions. There may well also be changes in the US approach to multinational organisations - and, of course, to China.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Douglas Elliott is a partner at Oliver Wyman in New York. He is the author of several papers on the Biden Administration's approach to financial regulation. He was previously a Fellow at Brookings, and before that spent two decades on Wall St.
Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington and at Bruegel in Brussels (of which he was a co-founder). He is also an independent director on the Board of the DTCC's trade repository.
Charles Taylor is currently a Visiting Scholar at GW Law in Washington. He is a former Executive Fellow at the Office of Financial Research in the US Treasury, a former Deputy Comptroller of the Currency (who represented the US on the Basel Committee), and a former Executive Director of the Group of 30.
An interview with Mohamed El-Erian: Biden, the Fed, the markets, Covid and the Middle East...
Why you should watch: Mohamed El-Erian is someone who moves markets. What he says matters - and, at the moment, his main concern revolves around the commitment by central banks to be the buyer of last resort for securities that, arguably, they should not touch. Yes, he understands the dilemma posed by the Covid crisis, but an excessively accommodating monetary stance is itself a danger. Bubbles can pop; inflation can creep up on policymakers. As for Biden, no problem with his programme - so far. This surely isn't (yet) the time for austerity. But don't write off Trump's legacy entirely: we won't go back to a tariff-free world, and globalisation Mark2 will be rather different than before. As for recovery from Covid itself, El-Erian is surprisingly upbeat: there are some silver linings. Also in the Middle East - where the key is education, education, education... (Heard that before?)
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Mohamed El-Erian is a man of many parts - and hats. An Egyptian, born in NYC and raised in the US, Egypt, France and the UK, he took on the role of President of Queens' College, Cambridge in October. He is also part-time chief economic adviser at Allianz and Senior Global Fellow at Wharton. Previously, he was CEO and CIO at Pimco and head of Harvard's endowment. Prior to that, he spent 15 years at the IMF after completing his DPhil at St Antony's, Oxford. He writes extensively for the FT, Bloomberg and Project Syndicate, and has published several books on global economics. He is also a former adviser to President Obama on development issues.
Why you should watch: In 2014, Anne Boden decided that what the UK needed was a brand-new, tech-based, branchless bank that (a) would not carry the legacy of generations-old IT systems, (b) that would operate through one's phone, not through high-cost branch networks, and (c) that (as she said) would 'put the customer first'. She wasn't entirely alone - but she was pretty much the first to get a banking license and the first to be profitable. Arguably, Starling is the most successful of the new 'disruptor' institutions, and, unlike some of its competitors, it appears to have thrived through the pandemic, using the CBILS and BBL programmes to build its customer base. She explains her motivation, how she did what she did, and how she sees the future - both for Starling and for UK banking.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Anne Boden is CEO and founder of Starling Bank, which she began to build in 2014 after a career that included senior positions at Allied Irish Bank, RBS, ABN Amro and Aon. She is, by background, a technologist, a computer science graduate from Swansea, with an MBA from Middlesex University.
Why you should watch: Anne Krueger may be in her ninth decade, but she is sharp as a tack - and not at all happy at what the Trump Administration has done to the global trading system. She remains a committed free trader, a believer in globalisation - and a guarded optimist about prospects both for the global economy (once Covid is defeated) and for the Biden Administration. Her thoughts on China, on multilateral cooperation, on the Gini coefficient, on EM indebtedness and on the limits of both fiscal and monetary policy are well worth watching. She also has a new book coming out: International Trade: What everyone needs to know (OUP).
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Prof. Anne Krueger is a former Chief Economist at the World Bank, and a former First Deputy MD (and Interim MD) at the IMF. She is currently a Senior Research Professor at SAIS in Washington, and a Senior Fellow (and Emerita Professor) at Stanford's Center for International Development, as well as being a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. She has taught at, among others, Stanford and Minnesota, and has written books on trade, India, Korea, Turkey and many other subjects. She has also advised a number of governments on debt (including, notably, Puerto Rico). She currently writes regularly for Project Syndicate.
Why you should watch: The talks on a post-Brexit trade arrangement have largely excluded services - and have almost entirely excluded financial services, despite the fact that they are the UK's 'jewel in the Crown'. Instead, the City has been left to fight a series of battles with Brussels on market access, on regulatory 'equivalence' and on passporting issues. So far, the EU has taken a tough line, even at the risk of damaging its own ability to raise money cheaply and efficiently for whatever purpose. That poses serious short-term problems for UK institutions - though it may open up new opportunities for the UK longer-term. Three leading experts in EU financial services discuss the transition from a short-term situation in which both the UK and EU stand to lose to a longer-term future where the UK might stand to gain - with specific recommendations for UK governmental and regulatory action.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Kay Swinburne is Vice-chair of financial services at KPMG UK. She is a former Vice-chair of the Economic and Monetary Affair Committee (ECON) in the European Parliament, of which she was a member from 2009 to 2019. (Particularly relevant at the present time, she has a PhD in Medical Research from KCL.)
Andrew Gray is Global Head of Brexit for Financial Services at PwC, where he has been a partner for over 30 years, and is Chair of the firm's UK Brexit Steering Committee.
Michael Sholem is Special Counsel in the financial services group at Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft in London, focusing on FinTech and financial regulation. He joined Cadwalader in 2013, from David Polk where he was European Counsellor.
Why you should watch:
Both the UK and the wider world face an almost unprecedented range of challenges - both exogenous (Covid, technology etc) and endogenous (Brexit, a new US Administration etc). We bounced back from the GFC quite quickly. How will we (consumers, policy-makers, central bankers, businesses) react this time? Three seriously eminent UK-based economists offer their thoughts - which are not as gloomy as some might expect.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Bronwyn Curtis is a 'British-Australian economist' - but a lot more than that. She is a former head of global research at HSBC, a former head of European Broadcast at Bloomberg, a former chief economist at Nomura International and a former chair of the Society of Business Economists. She is also a Governor of the LSE, a NED at the OBR, the senior independent director at Pershing Square and chair of JP Morgan's Asian Investment Trust.
Ian Stewart is a partner and chief economist at Deloitte, where (among other things) he is responsible for the firm's quarterly survey of CFOs. He also writes a Monday Briefing that goes to the firm's global client base. He is a former chief economist for Europe at Merrill Lynch, a former head of economics in the Conservative Research Department and a special adviser to the DWP.
George Magnus is an economist and author, whose most recent book is Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in jeopardy. He is a former chief economist at UBS and SG Warburg and is currently a research associate at Oxford's China Centre and at SOAS.
First and foremost, there's China. The 100th anniversary of the CCP is coming up, and an increasingly assertive leadership has already alienated many of its neighbours - as well as Washington. Then there's the UK's own role post-Brexit. Plus the changes in Washington as a new Administration takes over: just how much room will Biden have reorientating American policy? Will the world move into geopolitical blocs? Chris Parry is promoting the idea that the 'maritime democracies' will have to face off against the 'Eurasian autocracies'. Sounds like Mackinder and Mahon redux. What about 'soft power' - where we have a big advantage. And what about the inevitable tensions between China and Russia? How hard should we work to pry Moscow away from Beijing? Lots of crucial issues and insights - some of which (Taiwan?) may come up in the next 12 months, while others will simmer.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a former Foreign Secretary (1995-97), a former Defence Secretary (1992-95) and Secretary of State for Scotland (1986-90). He is also a former Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (2010-15). He is currently a Visiting Professor at KCL, and a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI.
Chris Parry has been a geopolitical consultant for the last 12 years, as founder of Merl House Strategic Forecasting. He is a former Rear-Admiral and Director-general for Concepts and Doctrine at the MoD. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.
Sophie Heading is the Global Geopolitics Lead at KPMG in London, helping companies and governments deal with today's geopolitical challenges.
Asia is the future - and Singapore has already shown itself to be capable of catching the economic zeitgeist. Can it do so again as the global economy pivots to advanced technology, AI, the IoT and the existential challenges posed by climate change? Is its tiny size, in the shadow of the Chinese elephant, a handicap or an advantage going forward? Three experts from the region give their views.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Varun Mittal is EY's Global Leader for Emerging Market FinTech, and is a founding member of the Singapore FinTech Association. His new book is Singapore: The FinTech Nation, just out.
Virginie Maisonneuve is director of Ajiliti Partners in Singapore. She was formerly chief investment officer at Eastspring, running a portfolio of US$195 billion across 11 Asian economies. She has been listed as one of the Top Women in Finance for many years.
Andrea Hajdu-Howe is a Partner at Antler Capital in Singapore. Antler is a global early stage venture capital company. She was previously an executive director at Goldman Sachs, and is a champion/mentor for Singapore's Financial Women's Association.
Why you should watch:
There are two issues here. One is the narrow one: Should the UK authorities approve the US$40 billion purchase of ARM Holdings by Nvidia - a US company that is subject to a whole panoply of US controls on exports of its technology? There are issues of principle here: the UK has traditionally been one of the most open economies as far as foreign investment is concerned. Is this sufficiently different to warrant a change? The other is a more general point: Are we moving to a world in which individual countries (or, in the case of Europe, regional blocs) will insist on autonomy in key technologies that they believe are absolutely crucial for their future? The UK Government's National Security and Investments Bill (now in Committee) seems to be a step in that direction. Have we thought the implications through sufficiently?
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Lord Mandelson has been Secretary of State for BEIS, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, EU Trade Commissioner - and many other things as well. He is currently chairman and co-founder of Global Counsel and an adviser to many commercial organisations, as well as being President of Policy Network.
Hermann Hauser is an Austrian-born entrepreneur who is one of the godfathers of 'Silicon Fen' - the tech cluster around Cambridge on which much of the UK's success in the technology sphere is based. He co-founded Acorn, and then span out ARM Holdings- currently owned by Japan's SoftBank. He also co-founded Amadeus Capital, which has invested successfully in a range of UK-based high-tech companies. He has a PhD from King's College, Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as an Honorary KBE.
Why you should watch: Until the end of September, Chris Woolard's job was an Executive Board member and interim CEO of the FCA. He has now been tasked with chairing a comprehensive review of change and innovation in the UK market for unsecured credit (the so-called Woolard Review) looking at inter alia, the impact of Covid on the market, the changes that are occurring because of technology, and the role of regulation - under the
FCA's rules, the Consumer Credit Act and the other regulatory constraints that the sector faces. The Review was launched in September; it is currently open for input from industry and consumer groups and recommendations are due to be published early in the New Year - which is a very tight time-frame indeed.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Christopher Woolard was an Executive Board member and Interim CEO of the FCA from March to September 2020. Prior to that, he was Director for Strategy and a member of the FCA's Board.
Sophie Lessar is a partner at DLA Piper in London, focusing on retail financial services. She was previously at Simmonds and Simmonds.
Why you should watch: Bob Lawrence is one of the leading trade economists in the world - and a former member of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (when it was chaired by Janet Yellen), to boot. He is as well positioned as anyone to offer insight into the policies that a Biden Administration will try to follow - and into the constraints that it is likely to face. In this interview, he discusses unilateral, bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral issues - ranging from WTO membership to the Paris Accord, from steel tariffs to China, from privacy issues to taxation, and the prospects of a trade deal with the UK... He also discusses the constraints Biden is likely to face as far as domestic policy is concerned.
Robert Z Lawrence is Albert L Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also a Research Associate at the NBER and a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington. He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1999 to 2001, and has a PhD from Yale.
Why you should watch: The basic premise of MMT is that governments can go on spending while there are resources that are underutilized, and while inflation is not a constraint. So, why not spend one's way out of the Covid crisis - investing in a 'progressive ' agenda that would kill (at least) two birds with one stone? It is an idea that has wide, and increasing, appeal - even if it flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, which seems (at least in the UK) to have shifted the debate from deficit spending to concern about how we are going to pay for the measures we have already taken. In the US, supporters of MMT have hopes for the Biden Administration - even though Biden himself is anything but an economic radical. One of the founders (and most articulate proponents) of MMT is Randy Wray. This is the second video we have done with him since the pandemic hit - and since the Democrats won back the White House.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (CSFI)
Randall Wray is Professor of Economics at Bard College in NY State, and a Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. He is a former Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he developed the fundamentals of MMT with, among others, Stephanie Kelton. His PhD is from Washington University, in St Louis, where he was a student of Hyman Minsky.
The Future of Payments: An interview with Guillaume Pousaz (Checkout.com)
Why you should watch: Checkout.com is (as everyone from Forbes to the BBC has pointed out) one of the most important companies you have probably never heard of. After its B round of funding earlier this year, its valuation leaped to US$5.5 billion - making it one of the very biggest UK-based FinTechs. It is now eyeing an IPO - almost certainly in NY, given that most of its VC investors are US. But its aspirations are global - with licenses in the UK, France, Brazil, Singapore and Dubai - among others. So, what does it do? It provides the back-end payments for e-commerce, almost exclusively at an enterprise (ie B2B) level - which differentiates it from Worldpay, PayPal and most of its other competitors. It also does it faster, which may count for something. Its Swiss founder, Guillaume Pousaz, is still CEO, (though he is based in Dubai) and is driving its very aggressive, tech-led expansion. He is also a genuinely innovative thinker about FinTech in general, and about what the financial ecosphere is going to look like as the Covid crisis recedes. Well worth listening to.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Guillaume Pousaz dropped out of University in Lausanne, went to California to surf, ended up working in a payments company - and then quit. With a partner, he set up NetMerchant in 2007. When the two went their separate ways, he set up Checkout.com - and has (he says) been consistently profitable since 2012. His A round funding brought in US$230 million; the B round added another US$150 million. He was listed as one of Fortune's '40 under 40' this year, and was a winner of Deloitte's FinTech award.
FinTech Review: with Jemima Kelly (FT Alphaville) & Tania Ziegler (CCAF)
Why you should watch: Our regular monthly wrap-up of FinTech developments was a lively affair. Kick-off was a discussion of Ant Group's pulled IPO, and what it means for FinTech regulation in China. Other issues included two important reports from the Cambridge Centre, the UK's position as Europe's FinTech hub, PayPal's move into cryptos, the Monzo/Starling bust-up, and a bizarre foray into the world of 'Fin-influencers' and the impact of Instagram and TikTok in the FS world.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jemima Kelly covers FinTech (and much else) for FT Alphaville - with a healthy dose of scepticism
Tania Ziegler is a senior research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, at the Judge Institute, where she leads on the global benchmarking project.
The Future of the Internet: with David Birch (15Mb/Consult Hyperion) and Nicolaus Henke (McKinsey)
Why you should watch: The Internet is changing. Privacy issues are becoming increasingly important - and that may lead to what some call the 'splinternet'. But the 'internet of things' means that the internet is also being incorporated into goods and services in a seamless way that we may not even notice. And in some industries - not least the automotive industry and pharmaceuticals - changes are astonishingly rapid and have made processes that were inherently rigid far more flexible, vide the speed with which Pfizer has been able to bring a Covid vaccine close to market. Two all-world experts discuss the opportunities and the risks
that AI, machine learning and the embodiment of the internet into almost all that we see and do mean for all of us.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
David GW Birch is the co-founder and global ambassador for ConsultHyperion, as well as the CEO of his own consulting company, 15Mb. He is a visiting professor at the University of Surrey and the author of a number of books, including The Currency Cold War, Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin and Identity is the New Money.
Nicolaus Henke is a senior partner with McKinsey in London, and chairman of the firm's AI venture, Quantum Black. He is a former co-founder of McKinsey Analytics and also chairs the firm's Technology Council. He has a PhD from the University of Münster and an MPA from the Kennedy School.
Why you should listen:
Wolfgang Munchau is one of the most perceptive and influential analysts of EU/UK relations - and Jonathan Isaby is one of the most articulate defenders of Brexit. How do they think negotiations with the EU are going - and what sort of a deal (if indeed there is to be a 'deal') will emerge? And, frankly, does it matter if there is to be No Deal? one of the fascinating suggestions that emerged from this discussion is that, just maybe, the best thing for both sides would be for negotiations to break down, for the UK to leave without a deal, and for talks to recommence (maybe late next year) from a position in which both sides would have something to gain from compromise. At the present time, it might be argued, both sides seem to feel a deal would require too many concessions; hence, there isn't the imperative to settle.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Wolfgang Munchau is the director (and co-founder) of EuroIntelligence - a 'specialist service for news and analysis of the EU and eurozone'. He is a former associate editor of the FT, a columnist for the paper, and a former co-editor of FT Deutschland. As he says, 'he speaks with a German accent, and writes with a British one'.
Jonathan Isaby is the new director of Politeia, which he joined in September when Sheila Lawlor moved over to be director of research. He is a former editor of BrexitCentral, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, and co-editor of ConservativeHome.
Why you should listen: Many of us find the alphabet soup around ESG reporting – from the bodies involved to the names of different initiatives – baffling. This discussion, involving experts on accounting, investing and financial analysis, points to a way forward. It entails giving authority to a global standard-setter to harmonise the reporting rules. The issues include: what is “material” to different audiences, what can actually be measured, the impact of public policy, and how to capture a range of potential outcomes.
Moderator: Jane Fuller, co-director, CSFI
Panellists:
Veronica Poole is a partner and Global IFRS and Corporate Reporting Leader at Deloitte. Veronica recently chaired the Accountancy Europe taskforce that backed a broader role for the international standard-setter. She is a member of the UK FRC’s Corporate Reporting Council and of the International Integrated Reporting Council.
Paul Lee has worked in investment for 20 years, principally at Hermes and most recently at Aberdeen Standard Investments. He advises fund managers and asset owners on stewardship, ESG and responsible investment, and worked with Sir Donald Brydon on his Review of the Quality and Effectiveness of Audit.
Ben Yeoh is a senior Portfolio Manager for RBC Global Asset Management and sits on the Investor Advisory Group for the FRC. He chairs the Responsible Investment Advisory Committee of a leading sustainable investment trust and sits on the IASB’s Management Commentary Advisory Group.
Chris Fidler is senior director, global industry standards at CFA Institute, the international financial analysts’ organisation, which has published a set of proposed ESG reporting standards for investment products. Before joining CFAI, Chris was a management consultant at Thought Logic LLC.
Why you should watch: There were serious questions about the attractiveness of banks to investors even before the pandemic, in terms of low share prices, depressed price-to-book ratios and a general feeling that banks should increasingly be treated as utilities. The pandemic and governments' responses to it have reinforced these concerns. Net interest margins are squeezed, dividends are restrained, and there is real pressure on capital buffers. But, at the same time, banks have done pretty well in macroeconomic terms in maintaining lending to the real economy. What does the future hold for them when/if the pandemic recedes? Alex Brazier, from the BoE, gives us a regulator's view; Simon Samuels and John Cronin offer an analyst's perspective.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Alex Brazier is the Bank of England's Executive Director for financial stability, strategy and risk. He is also a member of the Financial Policy Committee. He is a former Principal Private Secretary to the Governor, and manager of the Bank's forecasting team.
Simon Samuels is the founder of Veritum partners. He is a former managing director at Barclays Investment Bank and Citi, and was a Director at Kleinwort Benson.
John Cronin is financials analyst at Goodbody in Dublin, which he joined four years ago from Investec Ireland. Before that he worked with the National Treasury Management Agency on the restructuring of the country's financial sector.
Why you should watch: If you believe Pierpaolo Barbieri (and you should), the digital future is going to speak Spanish - or Mandarin. He is the Harvard/Cambridge historian/internet entrepreneur who is doing to Latin America (with the backing, among others, of George Soros) what Andrew Carnegie did to the US a hundred and fifty years ago - only with FinTech, rather than steel. Ualá is a phenomenon - based in the distinctly unpropitious neighbourhood of Argentina, but expanding rapidly North. His views - on China, on privacy, on the 'Pink Tide' that is allegedly sweeping America (South and North) - have real clout behind them; worth a detour.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Pierpaolo Barbieri is the founder of Ualá, Latin America's fastest-growing financial management tool, and ED of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical consultancy. He is a former Ernest May Fellow at the Kennedy School, educated at Harvard and Cambridge, and the author of several well-received books - including a history of Nazi Germany's involvement in the Spanish civil war. He has also been a strategic advisor at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
ESG Priorities Beyond the Pandemic: with Leon Kamhi (Federated Hermes), Catherine Howarth (ShareAction) and Jonas Rooze (BloombergNEF)
Why you should watch: Does the pandemic pit the S in ESG against the E? And what about better Governance at a time when firms are under stress and workforces threatened by factors outside their control? Our speakers are generally bullish about prospects for greater environmental awareness, but these are undoubtedly difficult times with budgets under stress, pressure on investment management fees and no end in sight to lockdown. As we look beyond Covid, will ESG concerns take second place to getting people back to work - or is the progress that is still being made (not least in developing common standards) so deeply embedded that it won't be derailed? Mostly, the answers are positive - but it will be a tricky time.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Leon Kamhi is head of responsibility and an Executive Director at Federated Hermes, a global leader in the ESG investing space.
Catherine Howarth is Chief Executive at ShareAction, which she joined in 2008, and a Board member of the Scott Trust (which owns The Guardian). She also serves on the Treasury's Asset Management Task Force.
Jonas Rooze is head of sustainability at BloombergNEF - which focuses on New Energy Finance. His LinkedIn page identifies him as a racing cyclist and vegetarian.
If you'd like a copy of the agenda, please email leighton@csfi.org
FinTech Review: with Jemima Kelly (FT Alphaville) and Jeff Lynn (Seedrs)
Why you should watch: Even as we face a second wave of Covid lockdowns, activity in the FinTech space is heating up again. One big story is the merger of Jeff Lynn's Seedrs with Crowdcube, to create a brand-new equity trading platform. But there's more to talk about - e.g. Ant's move into payments (and into the 'Antchain'), the surge in SPACs (including a SPAC ETF), the story of Jonathan Rowland's 'bitcoin bank', the relaunch of 'Monzo 2.0', and the EU's attempt to set rules for crypto assets. Plus, a little whinge about Nvidia's proposed takeover of ARM. Looking ahead, what will a Democratic Administration in the US mean for the tech giants?
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jemima Kelly is a reporter for FT Alphaville, who is carving out a niche as one of the FT's best informed writers on tech issues more broadly.
Jeff Lynn is the Executive Chairman and co-founder of Seedrs, an equity platform that has so far raised almost £1 billion through almost 1,200 deals since it launched in 2012. He is also the Vice-chairman of the European Crowdfunding Network, and Chairman of Coadec.
Refinancing SMEs: the role of non-banks in meeting the Covid-19 challenge
Why you should listen: When the Covid-19 crisis struck, small and medium-sized business – many of which had never been borrowers – were suddenly in need of every form of credit they could get. This video brings together leading representatives from the non-bank finance sector and from the SME world, and a seasoned commentator on all forms of SME finance. They discuss:
- whether the best use has been made of non-bank finance
- the crisis as a catalyst for reforming enterprise finance
- how the overhang of company debt can be worked through, allowing the government – and big banks – to back off
- what opportunities have emerged to broaden the choice of finance for SMEs
Moderator: Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Stephen Haddrill is Director General of the Finance & Leasing Association. Stephen joined the FLA last year after a decade as Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Reporting Council. Before that he headed the Association of British Insurers and, as a civil servant, held senior positions in the departments of Energy and Trade & Industry.
Martin McTague is Policy and Advocacy Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses. Martin has served as a volunteer with the FSB for 15 years in roles that include chairing the Local Government Policy Unit. He started his own business 28 years ago and now owns and manages three consultancies in public policy, engineering and IT.
Andy Davis, a financial commentator, has a special interest in the financing of small businesses, fintech and investment. Andy is a former assistant editor of the Financial Times and editor of FT Weekend. He is a contributor to Financial World magazine, which the CSFI produces for the LIBF, and associate finance editor of Prospect magazine.
'The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing societies, waning inequality and an inflation revival': with Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan
Why you should watch: Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan have a new book out - and it is really important. It argues (convincingly) that we are at an inflection point - that twenty years of low inflation, increasing globalisation and depressed wages are coming to an end, and that we are about to see significantly higher inflation and enormous strains on government finances. Yes, inequality within countries may fall as workers' bargaining power increases, but the reversal of globalisation may increase inter-societal inequality. Much of this is baked in as a result of demography: care for the elderly will become an enormous issue. Much of it also reflects the changes in China - whose emergence lay behind the disinflationary pressure of the last couple of decades. These changes are going to pose huge problems for policy-makers - and they are going to ensure that 'the future is nothing like the past'. Charles and Manoj discuss their book, and Roger Bootle (whose 1996 book, 'The Death of Inflation', spotted an earlier inflection point) kicks off the response. With Jane Fuller.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Prof Charles Goodhart is an Emeritus Professor at LSE, where he was co-founder of the Financial Markets Group and, for many years, the Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics. He is a former chief adviser at the BofE and a Member of the Bank's MPC.
Manoj Pradhan is Chief Economist and founder at Talking Heads Macro, which provides structural macro-economic analysis. He is a former MD at Morgan Stanley, with a PhD from George Washington University.
Roger Bootle is Chairman and founder of Capital Economics, and a columnist at the Telegraph. He is a former Group Chief Economist at HSBC and is the author of many books, including The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets and, most recently, The AI Economy.
Why you should watch: The Conservative government announced in June that it would merge the Department for International Development into the FCO, to create a new FCDO. Since (as far as most development specialists were concerned) DfID was actually one of the more effective government departments, and since the UK's aid effort is generally considered one of its major international strengths, there was a fair bit of head-scratching about this. Would a merger increase Britain's 'soft power', or would it lead to the commercialization (or even 'weaponization') of aid? One of those who was strongly opposed was the former Aid Secretary, Andrew Mitchell - who found a lot of support from the NGO sector and from academics. But the merger (or 'takeover') went through at the beginning of September, and there is now no chance of reversing it. So, what can be achieved with the new structure? And how can we monitor what the new Whitehall behemoth is up to? Listen to Mr Mitchell and two leading lights from the aid community.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Andrew Mitchell is the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield. He is the son of a former Tory MP, and served as Secretary of State for Development from 2010 to 2012. Prior to going into politics he was a military peacekeeper in Cyprus and a banker with Lazards. He has worked in West Africa and Rwanda, where he was involved with Project Umubano.
Dirk Willem te Velde is the Director of the International Economic Development Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London, where he leads the Aid for Trade project.
Romilly Greenhill is the UK Director of the ONE Campaign, which advocates globally for an end to poverty, and which counts among its Board members luminaries like Aliko Dangote, Mo Ibrahim and Bono.
Why you should watch: Bloomberg has (apparently) been pitching Bitcoin as a hedge against the pandemic, suggesting in June that it might in fact double in value by year-end. Maybe. Ytd, it is up 50% - which actually beats gold, which is up 25%. And it has done far better than the dollar, which is down around 2.4% ytd and almost 5% year-on-year. But, even though it has been around for a dozen years, Bitcoin is still nowhere near cracking the market as a serious alternative to transactional fiat currencies - and the cost of mining is kinda sorta getting out of hand. Maybe environmentalists should fret that (according to some experts) somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0% of total energy consumption is now going into Bitcoin mining. This panel brings together an eminent US academic from the University of Chicago, two UK-based entrepreneurs who are making crypto trading (not just Bitcoin) more accessible, and FT Alphaville's resident sceptic.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Eric Budish is the Steven Rothmeier Professor of Economics at Chicago's Booth School of Business and a research associate at the NBER. He is also co-director of the University's Initiative on Global Markets, and recently presented an important paper on Bitcoin and blockchain at the Atlanta Fed.
Mark Hipperson is the CEO of Ziglu, which has recently obtained a banking license, and which offers retail customers the opportunity to trade Bitcoin at competitive rates. He is a former CTO at Starling Bank and at Centrip, and spent 11 years at Barclays on the technology side.
Jack Gavigan is the head of product and regulatory affairs at the Electric Coin Co, where he has been developing Z/Cash as a new crypto currency. He defines himself as a 'fintechnologist focussed on virtual currencies and blockchain technology'. He is a former trader, who also worked with Mark at Starling.
Jemima Kelly, who anchors the CSFI's monthly FinTech review, is a reporter for FT Alphaville whose beat includes technology.
US FinTech overview, with Kathryn Petralia (Kabbage) and Ian Kar (FinTech Today)
Why you should watch: When it comes to contactless and Open Banking, Europe may be well ahead of the US, and the regulatory environment may (in some ways) be less encouraging. But Covid has really given US FinTechs a boost - not least as the transmission mechanism for PPP loans. But that's not all. There are many exciting developments in the platform space, many partnerships between mainstream banks and their FinTech competitors and some really innovative ways of reaching lower income groups and smaller businesses. One leading entrepreneur and a top NYC tech journalist discuss what is going on, how Covid has affected the sector, and what we can expect.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Kathryn Petralia is the COO and co-founder of Kabbage, a major provider of automated cash flow solutions and lender to 130,000 smaller businesses in the US. based in Atlanta. She was listed as one of the top 10 Women in FinTech in FinTech magazine, and ranked 98 on Forbes's 2017 list of the 'most powerful women in the world'. Kabbage also has been a significant presence in the UK market since 2013.
Ian Kar is CEO and founder of FinTech Today, a subscription research and newsletter provider based in NY. With 5,000 subscribers, he follows product strategy and provides analysis on FinTech developments in the US. He was previously a journalist with Quartz, also based in NY.
'China: The bubble that never pops': A discussion with the author, Tom Orlik, and with Jonathan Fenby and Jinny Yan
Why you should watch: Tom Orlik's new book addresses one of the key questions in contemporary economics: Why has China's meteoric rise from poverty-stricken backwater to the second largest economy in the world been so rapid - and is it evidence that the West's belief in a (more or less) free market system is misplaced? Equally important, will China's rise continue? Or will the tensions within Chinese society lead to an implosion? In particular, has the coronavirus changed the rules, and if so, can Beijing adapt? Tom's conclusions are broadly optimistic - conclusions that are generally endorsed by Jinny Yan and Jonathan Fenby, albeit with significant caveats.
Tom Orlik is chief economist at Bloomberg Economics, based in Washington. He was previously chief Asia economist. Before joining Bloomberg, he was a columnist at the WSJ. He has spent 11 years in Asia, mostly in China. Before that, he was a policy analyst at the UK Treasury, and an adviser to the UK Executive Director at the World Bank and IMF.
Jonathan Fenby is chairman of China Research at TS Lombard. He is a former editor of the South China Morning Post and the Observer. Between 1998 and 2019, he wrote 17 books - nine on China (including a biography of Chiang Kai-shekj) and four on France.
Jinny Yan is chief China economist at ICBC Standard Bank in London, which she joined in 2016 from Standard Chartered.
Trump and Biden: What to expect on economic policy after the election.
Why should you watch: This Presidential election matters - on economic policy as much as on political and social issues. What will a Biden Administration do - on fiscal policy, on the environment, on infrastructure, on trade, on data flows - even on the possibility of an FTA with the UK? And what would a second Trump Administration mean on those same issues? Three US-based all-world experts offer their opinions.
Catherine Mann is the Global Chief Economist at Citi, which she joined from the OECD, where she was also Chief Economist. She previously taught at Brandeis, and was an economist at both the Council of Economic Advisers in Washington and the Fed, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute. She has a PhD from MIT.
Larry J White is the Robert Kavesh Professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, where he specialises in banking, regulation and technological change. He is a former Board Member of the FHLBB in Washington. He has a PhD from Harvard.
Edward Luce is the US national editor of the FT, based in Washington, where he was previously bureau chief. He is a former speechwriter for Larry Summers, and is the author, most recently, of 'The Retreat of Western Liberalism'.
Lebanon: Is there a way back from the abyss? With Maha Yahya (Carnegie Middle East Center), Amer Bisat (Blackrock) and Nafez Zouk (Oxford Economics)
Why you should watch: Lebanon is on the edge. Following the explosion in Beirut port, there have been other mysterious fires, the government has collapsed, the central bank is at loggerheads with the IMF, President Macron's initiative appears to have ground to a halt - and there is very little light at the end of the tunnel. That is, unless one sees the fact that public and private debt is not being serviced, that bank depositors are accepting haircuts on their money and that the currency has probably overshot on the downside as signs of 'progress' - at least, progress of a sort. This discussion brings together three leading experts - one from Beirut (Maha Yahya, from the Carnegie Endowment), Amer Risat (from Blackrock) and Nafez Zouk (from Oxford Economics). No solutions - but a lot of very well-informed speculation about what could work and what probably won't. Not for the faint-hearted.
Maha Yahya is Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, currently in Beirut. She previously worked with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and for UNDP in Lebanon. She was also the principal author of the 2008 National Himan Development Report for Lebanon. She has a PHD from MIT, and a PhD from the Architectural Association.
Amer Bisat is a managing director and head of Blackrock's emerging markets crossover team. Prior to joining Blackrock in 2013, he was a partner in two macro hedge funds. From 1991-98, he was a senior economist at the IMF. He has a PhD from Columbia, where he has also taught. From 2012-2014, he was the President of ABANA - an association of finance professionals in the Middle East and North Africa.
Nafez Zouk is the lead emerging markets economist at Oxford Economics in London. He was previously an economic analyst at the EBRD and a senior research analyst at the Institute of International Finance.
Please email Leighton at leighton@csfi.org if you would like the pre-briefing for this meeting
FinTech Review, with Jemima Kelly (FT) & Rob Churcher (PwC) - CSFI
Why you should watch:
A curious month. Ant Group’s blockbuster IPO is ensuing. What does that mean for Chinese (and global) FinTech? UK FinTech founders are calling for more government support. Blockchain and bitcoin are back on Jemima’s mind. Wirecard’s plan to buy Deutsche has come out, and there is still more to come in the months ahead. Klarna and the other ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ vehicles are having a good crisis. ‘Deep fake’ CEOs, Kenyans and Silicon Valley loans - and much more.
Moderators: Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jemima Kelly is a reporter at the FT, where she writes for FT Alphaville. She has recently written about coronavirus, and writes most frequently about blockchain, and FinTech more broadly. She previously worked at Reuters and The Economist.
Robert Churcher is building a portfolio of high growth companies for PwC UK. He was previously the FinTech Strategy lead. Prior to joining PwC, Rob was MD of a (very cool-sounding) alpine sports startup. He is a seasoned CSFI panellist.
The Future of Cities in the wake of Covid19, with Robert Muggah (SecDev/Igarape), Yael Selfin (KPMG) and Simon Jeffrey (Centre for Cities)
Why you should watch: Do cities have a future? Will we continue WFH when the pandemic passes? Or will the centripetal attraction of a large city like London outweigh the disadvantages? If we don't go back to our old ways, what will be the impact on property prices, on rents, on public transport - and on the career prospects of those who don't have the opportunities for serendipitous interaction that they had before? Can we re-engineer our economies so that they depend less on mega-cities and more (say) on second-tier cities and larger towns? These are real issues that our governments - national and local - are going to have to deal with.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Robert Muggah (apparently an old Scottish name, though he is Canadian) has set up two think-tanks in Brazil, where he is based: the SecDev Group focuses on the digital economy and cybersecurity; Igarape looks at safety and justice in Latin America. On top of that, he has worked with Google, McKinsey, the WEF, the World Bank, the UN etc on problems of urbanisation, and has written seven books. He has a DPhil from Oxford.
Yael Selfin is chief economist at KPMG in London, and a Fellow at the National Institute. She was formerly head of macro-consulting at PwC, and before that was a partner at Volterra. She is also a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, and has written extensively on rethinking cities.
Simon Jeffrey is a policy officer at the Centre for Cities in London, where he leads on devolution and transportation.
Chinese FinTech: An overview of the world's most important market, with Yi Huang (Graduate Institute, Geneva), Yassine Regragui (Deloitte/Alibaba) and Anna Hu (Globepay Ltd.)
Why you should watch: When it comes to FinTech (or its near-cousin, TechFin), China is where it's at. But we just don't know enough about what's driving take-up in China, and where China itself is going. Three experts - two Chinese, and one European who spent six years in Hangzhou and Shanghai - discuss the present and the future for Chinese FinTech, both domestically and internationally.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSF)
Yi Huang is an Associate Professor and the Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He is also a research affiliate at the CEPR and visiting research fellow at the HK Institute for Monetary Research. He was formerly an economist at the IMF and a research associate at the Dallas Fed.
Yassine Regragui is a specialist on FinTech and China, who spent four years at Alibaba and Alipay in Hangzhou and two years with Y Creations in Shanghai. He splits his time between Deloitte in Paris and the Alibaba Business School, where he is a certified FinTech expert.
Anna Hu is the founder and CEO of Globepay Ltd, here in London, and an 'official partner' of Alipay and WeChatPay. Globepay 'offers a Chinese payment network to UK businesses'.
Why you should watch: US-based Robinhood may have quit the UK market, but the commission-free, zero fee, app-based broking model is alive and well in Britain - and is growing by leaps and bounds. One of the most successful (if not yet profitable) players is Freetrade - set up in 2016 by a team led by KPMG alumnus, Adam Dodds. It targets tech-savvy millennials who live their lives on phones, and it already has North of 250,000 subscribers investing in both UK and US stocks - including fractional stocks and ETFs. The downside is that the 'gamification' of equity trading may be dangerous to one's health. Curmudgeons might argue that trading ought not to be quite as easy as Freetrade makes it.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI), Jane Fuller (Co-Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead)
Adam Dodds is the CEO and co-founder of Freetrade. A Canadian, he previously worked for KPMG in Canada, the Caymans and here in the UK before setting up Freetrade in 2016 with both VC money and crowdfunding. He is a CFA Chartered Financial Analyst.
John Detrixhe is a senior reporter at Quartz, which he joined three years ago from Bloomberg where he spent nine years, in both NY and London. He has written extensively on both the upside and downside of 'free' broking models.
Why you should watch: Bob Zoellick is America' s man for all seasons. A former President of the World Bank, Deputy Secretary of State, US Special Trade Representative, Deputy White House chief-of-staff, and MD at Goldman Sachs, he is currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, a Board member at Temasek, Twitter and the Carnegie Endowment, and an adviser on geopolitics at Brunswick. As his former boss, Jim Baker said, he 'combines Midwest common sense with policy sophistication'. - and he has just written a powerful book to prove the point. It is a major piece of research, going back to Hamilton, Jefferson, Seward and Root - but never forgetting where America stands today, and what lessons history might have for us. Watch, to learn more about the book - but also to understand better the US relationship with the UK, both historically and going forward in a post Brexit world.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Robert Zoellick was President of the World Bank from 2007 to 2012. He was Deputy Secretary of State in 2005-06, and USTR from 2001 to 2005. He is a recipient of the State Department's Distinguished Service Award. In 2012, he became a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School's Belfer Centre. He is also a Board member at the Carnegie Endowment in NYC. He writes extensively on foreign policy issues
Why you should watch: Last month, two of the UK's most senior lawyers, Dame Elizabeth Gloster and Guy Beringer, published a letter in the FT urging the government to provide the sort of support for the UK's dispute resolution system that it already does for, say, the film and fashion industries. After all, English law is crucial to the UK economy - and there is no doubt that it is under challenge from NY law, from Brexit and from the development of local alternatives not least in Asia. Liz and Guy explain what they want, and why. And Simon Gleeson adds his own contribution to a topic that will become increasingly important.
Dame Elizabeth Gloster, currently a senior arbitrator, is a former Judge of the Appeals Court, head of the Commercial Court and Vice-president of the Civil Division. She was appointed to the Privy Council in 2013, and is currently preparing a report into the LCF affair.
Guy Beringer QC is a former senior partner at Allen and Overy, a non-exec at HM Courts Services and a panel member of the Cooperation and Competition Panel. He is also chairman of the Legal Education Foundation and an Adjunct Professor at Imperial College Business School.
Simon Gleeson is a partner at Clifford Chance, chairman of the Institute for International Finance's cross-border resolution committee, a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh and a Visiting Fellow at All Souls.
Why you should watch: Stephen Roach is one of America's foremost economists. He is deeply pessimistic on chances of the US avoiding a 'double dip' recession, and is equally sceptical about the ability of the dollar to maintain its primacy in the face of the US's economic problems. On China, he is convinced that the Trump Administration is misguided - though he concedes that bashing Beijing has bipartisan support.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Stephen Roach is a Senior Fellow at Yale's Jackson Institute, where he has been for the last 11 years after a distinguished career on Wall St. He began (after a PhD at NYU) as a researcher at the Fed, moved to Morgan Guaranty and thence to Morgan Stanley, ending up as chief economist and Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. He writes extensively for Project Syndicate. Among his books, the most recent is Unbalanced: The codependency of the US and China.
Why you should watch: Just how unique are the problems facing the financial system as a result of the Covid pandemic? Is it truly existential? Or are there lessons which can be learned from previous crises - going back to May Day, Big Bang and the GFC? And to what extent should we be willing to put the crisis ahead of other priorities - from AI to climate change? A wide-ranging discussion with three senior figures whose experience goes back fifty years or more.
Sir David Scholey was Chairman of (inter alia) SG Warburg, Warburg Becker, SBC Warburg, Mercury Securities, and Close Brothers. He is also a former Director of the London Symphony Orchestra and INSEAD, a former Governor of the BBC and NIESR, and a former Trustee of the Barbican, Glyndebourne and the National Portrait Gallery.
Christine Downton is a former Chief Executive of Natwest Investment Management, County Natwest and County Bank. She is also the founding partner of Pareto Partners, and Chair of the Learning Trust. In 1986, she achieved immortality (in Wired) by having her brain downloaded by Hughes Research Lab in California - one of the first AI ventures in the investment management space.
Brian Scott-Quinn is the Chairman of the ICMA (formerly ISMA) Centre at the University of Reading, which he set up after a City career that included spells as Finance Director at both Ross & Partners and Drexel Burnham Lambert. He has just completed a book on the finance industry's contribution to sustainability.
Modern Monetary Theory builds on something pretty obvious - that countries which print their own money and don't incur debts in foreign currencies don't go broke. It takes that truism and builds a different way of looking at government's role - and particularly at the constraints that governments face when making spending decisions. For MMT adherents, it makes sense for governments to go on spending productively until they hit a resource constraint - usually, until all 'surplus' labour is gainfully occupied, either in the private sector or through a public job creation scheme.. One of the leading exponents of MMT is Prof Randall Wray, from Bard College, and in this interview (with Andrew Hilton) he talks about MMT and the pandemic, its link to the Green New Deal, and how it is seeping into mainstream economics.
Prof Randall Wray is Professor of Economics at Bard College in NY State, and a Senior Scholar at the Levy Institute of Economics. He has a PhD from Washington University in St Louis, where he worked with Hyman Minsky, and taught for many years at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, where much of the academic work on MMT was first done. He is the author of a number of books, including Understanding Modern Money (1998), Modern Money Theory (2012), and A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox economic policy for the C21 (2020).
The International Financial Architecture: Fit for purpose?
Covid19 is a massive blow to the real economy - but how is the financial system coping? Better or worse than the GFC? And how are we going to unwind the massive increase in both public and private debt? Should banks and governments be thinking now about a coordinated approach (perhaps through the FSB) to what's going to happen when they find themselves equity owners of thousands of companies - both big and small - that have only been propped up by government largesse? An open-ended discussion with the former Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, and US representative on the Basel Committee.
Charles Taylor was Deputy Comptroller at the OCC from 2011 to 2016, during which time he also chaired the Basel Committee's Standards Implementation Group. He then became Executive Fellow at the US Treasury's Office of Financial Research and is now a Visiting Scholar at GW Law School in DC. Prior to joining the OCC, he headed the Pew Trust's Financial Reform Project, was Executive Director of the Group of 30, and worked with a number of major consultancies. He began his career at the World Bank.
Insurance and the pandemic: what's the way forward?
Why you should watch:
While much attention has been focused on the issues around business interruption insurance (and the damage that can do to the industry's reputation), insurers have actually done pretty well at maintaining payouts through a time of great stress. But this is (in many eyes) a 'systemic' problem, rather than a run-of-the-mill 'catastrophe' - and that inevitably means a bigger role for government. Should there be a Pandemic Re? But maybe the next crisis will not be another pandemic; maybe it will be a massive cyber attack or terrorism. How do we write policies going forward that are precise enough to satisfy the lawyers, but flexible enough to cover risks that are rapidly evolving? And what about the reinsurance industry; will it continue to follow the industry, or will it say 'no mas'? A fascinating discussion with five industry leaders.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Julian Enoizi is CEO of Pool Re, the government-back terrorism reinsurer. He is a former CEO of CNA Europe, Argo International and Prosight. He is a Board member of the OECD's International Network on the Management of Catastrophes.
James Dalton is Director of General Insurance, and a member of the Executive Team, at the ABI. He is also Director of the Insurance Fraud Bureau.
Cheng Li Yow is a Partner in the Financial Institutions Corporate Group at Clifford Chance, specialising in insurance regulation and environmental risk.
Shirley Beglinger is an advisory board member at Crescendo Advisors and a director at the Shires Partnership. She is a former Insurance Fellow at the CSFI.
Oliver Ralph is Insurance Correspondent at the Financial Times. He is a former editor at the Investors Chronicle.
Libra, Novi and the future of global payments
Why you should watch:
This is a seriously high-powered discussion with three of the major figures behind the Libra initiative - and with a highly knowledgeable sceptic to ask the sort of tough questions that they will have to answer if, indeed, Libra is going to live up to its billing as a global game-changer. Worth a detour...
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (CSFI)
Panellists:
Dante Disparte is Vice-chair and Head of Policy and Communications at the Libra Association. He is also Founder and Chairman of the Risk Cooperative, Chair of the Business Council for American Security and a columnist at Forbes.
Christian Catalini is chief economist at Libra, on secondment to the Libra Association. He is also the Theodore Miller Professor at MIT's Sloan School, and an Associate Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University, as well as a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER. He is the founder of MIT's Cryptoeconomics Lab.
Matthew Davie is Chief Strategy Officer at Kiva one of the world's leading micro-lenders, and a Board Member of the Libra Association. He is also an advisor to the Linux Foundation.
Tim Jones is Executive Director of Tata Ltd, representing the Tata Group in London. He was the developer of two payment systems, Purseus and Tibado, and is a former Head of the retail bank at Natwest - where he was also responsible for the development of Mondex.
Exiting the Covid economy - babies and bathwater
Why you should watch:
On July 18, Prof Andrew Oswald published a letter in the FT, highlighting misplaced fears about the coronavirus, particularly fears among the under-50s for whom this really is not the existential health threat that the media tends to suggest. As he put it, 'fear kills economies' - and we are in danger of killing the economy (and the economic prospects of a younger generation) if we go on the way we are going. This interview with Professor Oswald and with Kevin Gardner focuses on the need for much better (and more transparent) information, and for much greater involvement by economists in any exit strategy; over-reliance on epidemiologists has inflicted greater pain than was really necessary.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Prof Andrew Oswald is Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick, which he joined from LSE in 1996. He is a specialist in labour economics and in the 'economics of human well-being'. Recent work includes papers on the post-Covid recovery strategy, individual Covid fatality rates and the case for releasing the young from lockdown.
Kevin Gardner is Global Investment Strategist at Rothschild Wealth Management, which he joined in 2014. He previously held senior positions at Barclays and HSBC.
A ‘super’ way to improve the prospect of defined benefit pensions being paid in full?
Why you should watch:
The Pensions Regulator has just published guidance for the formation of DB pension super funds, vehicles that will help to consolidate the fragmented sector – about 5,400 “defined benefit” schemes with around 10 million members. Since employers have closed many of them to new members, they are typically regarded as legacy liabilities. The trouble is that a significant minority are under-funded and have weak corporate sponsors, as Ashok Gupta’s taskforce revealed.
Stronger schemes are in a good position to be transferred to insurers, such as Pension Insurance Corporation – Jay Shah explains its role. Failed ones (triggered by corporate collapses) go into the Pension Protection Fund, but benefits are cut. Pension super funds are poised to step into the space in between, and Antony Barker sets out the business model that will be pursued by The Pension SuperFund.
As ever in this complex field, the parties will need advice. Amanda Latham, of Barnett Waddingham, is looking ahead to 15 years of transformation.
Moderator: Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Jay Shah is Chief Origination Officer at Pension Insurance Corporation. In 12 years at the firm, he has overseen some landmark pension insurance transactions, including Phillips, Siemens and Cadbury. Jay was previously actuarial adviser and Director of Corporate Finance at PwC and Corporate Development Director at Prudential UK.
Ashok Gupta is a former chair of AA Insurance Services and Skandia UK, and founder director of the Phoenix Group. His non-executive roles include Sun Life Financial Inc and Chair of EValue. In 2016-17, he led the DB Taskforce of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.
Antony Barker is Managing Director of The Pension SuperFund. Formerly, he was Director of Pensions/CIO for Santander UK. His international career spans corporate finance, banking and insurance. He was seconded to the Department of Work and Pensions to create the Pension Protection Fund.
Amanda Latham is Policy and Strategy Lead at Barnett Waddingham, a leading professional services consultancy in risk, pensions, investment and insurance. She previously held senior policy roles at The Pensions Regulator, covering topics that included DB consolidation.
China and the UK: Geopolitics, Economics and Finance. A discussion with Nigel Inkster (ex-MI6), George Magnus (Oxford China Centre) and Matthew Rous (China-Britain Business Council)
Why you should watch:
Three all-world experts discuss the key issue of the day: How to handle China - if we can. What does China want? Does it have the means to get what it wants? How vulnerable are we in the UK to a trade war with China? And what (if anything) can we expect from a change of Administration in Washington?
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Nigel Inkster is a director at Enodo Consulting and a senior advisor at the IISS - of which he was latterly Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk. He is a former Director of Operations and Intelligence for MI6, and the author of an important book on China's cyber power. His next book, 'The Great Decoupling', is due out at the end of this year.
George Magnus is currently a Senior Associate at Oxford's China Centre and at SOAS. He is a former chief economist at UBS and SG Warburg. His latest book is 'Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy'.
Matthew Rous is CEO of the China-Britain Business Council, which has 13 offices throughout China and which recently published an important report (with Cambridge Econometrics) on the benefits business with China brings to the UK. He is a former diplomate, whose last posting was as Consul-general in Guangzhou.
Sustainable Finance Review
Why you should watch:
Our usual monthly wrap of what is going on in the sustainability space - with particular focus on climate change. Lots on the regulatory front - from the UK, Singapore, the US and Australia. And the BoE gets ahead of the pack by assessing its own bond portfolio - albeit not (yet) its gilts portfolio. Plus new warming metrics for commercial portfolios., and a lively discussion on funding coal projects.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI0
Panellists:
Ben Caldecott is founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme and an associate professor at the Smith School. He is also a member of the UK Green Finance Taskforce, a co-chair of the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment and an advisor on COP26.
Pippa Gawley is founder and director a Zero Carbon Capital, a CleanTech investor in the UK and US,. She is a member of several angel investor networks on both sides of the Atlantic.
Chris Faint is a Head of Division at the Bank of England, where he heads up the Climate Hub and coordinates the Bank's work on climate change.. He was previously private secretary to the Deputy Governor.
Labour's City policy: An interview with the Party's Shadow City Minister
Why you should watch:
Labour under Keir Starmer is suddenly a plausible alternative to Boris Johnson's Tory Government. True, BoJo still has an 80-seat majority, but - for the first time in several years - what Labour's front bench says actually matters. Pat McFadden is the Shadow City Minister, and has been explaining just where Labour's policy for handling the COVID crisis differs from that of the Conservatives, and where it is supportive. Offering an alternative view is Alex Brummer, City Editor of the Daily Mail (who also happens to be a regular columnist for the New Statesman).
Pat McFadden is the MP for Wolverhampton SE, and the Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury. He is a former member of the Treasury Select Committee, and was a Business Minister under Peter Mandelsojn in the Gordon Brown Administration. He was also Shadow Minister for Europe under Ed Miliband, but was fired by Jeremy Corbyn.
Alex Brummer is City Editor of the Daily Mail, which he joined in 1999 from The Guardian, where he had been FInancial Editor. He is also a columnist for the New Statesman and is a prolific author on banking and on the UK economy.
Payments in the Plague Year, and beyond
Why you should watch: The Covid crisis has accelerated changes that were already underway in the payments space - particularly the move from cash, but also the move from plastic to mobile phones. However, the Wirecard scandal (though it was - emphatically - not a technology problem) has also exposed regulatory issues that need to be addressed, and the slump in global remittances has re-emphasised just how expensive cross-border transfers can be. An important discussion - with three leading figures in the payments industry.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Ruth Wandhofer (www.rwandhofer.com) is a partner in Gauss Ventures, a PE company specialising in FinTech. She was on the 'Women in FinTech' powerlist for 2016/17/18, and is a former Global Head of Regulatory and Market Strategy for Citi Transaction Services. She has a PhD from (what used to be) Cass Business School
Sandra Alzetta is VP and Global Head of Payments at Spotify. Before that, she spent 27 years at Visa, latterly as Executive Director for Digital Services, and before that as ED for Core Products. She has an MEng from Strathclyde.
Tony Craddock is Director-general of the Emerging Payments Association, which he set up in 2012, and co-editor of the PayTech Book. The EPA has 130 members, including banks, payment schemes, issuers, merchant acquirers and retailers.
Prospects for the Asia-Pacific region post-Covid: A discussion with Changyong Rhee (IMF) and Sherry Madera (Refinitiv)
Why you should watch: The IMF has recently downgraded its economic forecasts for the Asia-Pac region, again. It is now looking at negative growth of 1.6% this year - though it anticipates a bounceback in 2021, with growth of 6.6%. But that's not evenly spread, and much depends on China. More fragile economies - those dependent on tourism and remittances, in particular - face a very difficult recovery, as do those where the coronavirus pandemic is still not under control. There are also important issues of capital flight, liquidity - and, of course, broader concerns about the geopolitical situation.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Changyong Rhee is Director of the Asia-Pacific Department at the IMF in Washington. He is a former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank, a former Secretary-general of the Presidential Committee for the 2010 Seoul G20 Summit and Vice-chairman of Korea's Financial Services Commission. He has a PhD from Harvard, and has taught at Seoul National University and at the University of Rochester.
Sherry Madera is Global Head of Industry and Government Affairs at Refinitiv. She is a former Economic Ambassador to Asia for the City of London Corporation, and Minister-Counsellor at the British Embassy in Beijing.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
The WTO and the global trading system, with Adam Posen (Peterson Institute), Sir Vince Cable, Stuart Harbinson, Peter Ungphakorn and David Tinline
Why you should watch:
The multilateral trading system is under threat. The US hasn't been pulling its weight - and seems disinclined to support the WTO. China and India pose a new challenge - particularly when it comes to state-owned enterprises, subsidies, national security exemptions, IP, and many other issues. And, of course, there are those who felt globalisation was going into reverse even before Covid19 struck. Now, we have the pretty open competition for a new DG, with the UK Government having nominated the former Trade Minister, Liam Fox. He joins seven others, with the winner to be selected by early November. An exceptionally distinguished panel of trade experts discusses the issues.
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Adam Posen is President of the Peterson Institute in DC. He is a former external member of the BofE's MPC, who had a crucial influence in the discussions preceding the Bank's move towards QE. He has a PhD from Harvard, and is considered one of America's foremost economists.
Sir Vince Cable is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats and a former Secretary of State for BIS (and President of the Board of Trade). He is also a former chief economist at Shell, and has a PhD from Glasgow.
Stuart Harbinson is a former chief of staff to two DGs at the WTO - Supachai and Pascal Lamy. He also represented Hong Kong (and the SAR of Hong Kong) at the WTO, and chaired a number of WTO bodies - including TRIPs, services and disputes settlement.
Peter Ungphakhorn runs a trade blog, the 'Beta Blog'. He was formerly information officer at the WTO and is an occasional consultant for AgribusinessIntelligence.
David Tinline is a former senior adviser to WTO DG Roberto Azevedo, and a member of his cabinet. He was formerly chief speechwriter at HSBC.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Grumpy Old Bankers: A discussion of responses to the Covid-19 crisis, with Sir Win Bischoff, David Potter and Rudi Bogni
Why you should watch: Can we learn from previous crises, or is the current coronavirus panic entirely sui generis? And, if we can learn, what should be the take-aways? Three senior City figures discuss inequality, regional 'bad banks', the impact on commercial and investment banking, the conflicting pressures on governments and what we need in terms of skills going forward.
Sir Win Bischoff is the Chairman of JPMorgan (Europe). He is a former Chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, Citigroup and Schroders, and also of the Financial Reporting Council. The FT has described him as a 'quietly subversive figure at the heart of the City of London for decades'.
David Potter is a former CEO and Chairman of Guinness Mahon and MD of Midland Bank's Global Corporate Banking. He is also a former Deputy Chairman of Investec, and has spent the last 20 years as a NED and/or Trustee of many City institutions, including King's College and Quercus Books.
Rudi Bogni is currently a Director of several investment companies, including Waypoint Capital and Northill. He is also a trustee of the Prince of Liechtenstein's Foundation and of LGT. He is a former Group Treasurer of Midland Bank, head of private banking at UBS and senior independent director at Old Mutual.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Papers/videos discussed in the video:
https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Ada-Lovelace-Institute-Rapid-Evidence-Review-Exit-through-the-App-Store-April-2020-1.pdf
https://institute.global/policy/digital-identity-missing-piece-governments-exit-strategy
https://www.biginnovationcentre.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Parliamentary-Brief-Public-Health-How-can-AI-help-in-the-fight-against-Covid-19_.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rgyq3EV-Hg&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP7C9PPZD1A
Title: How much has Covid-19 already accelerated trends in digital and AI? A discussion with Husayn Kassai (Onfido) and Prof. Birgitte Andersen (Big Innovation Centre).
Why you should watch:
Analytics Insight reports that the AI Market world-wide will grow from $43 billion in 2019 to $153 billion in 2023. Expectations for an AI future are high, and AI, cybersecurity and digital identity firms are having a good crisis right now. Onfido, which "helps businesses digitally onboard users by verifying any government ID and comparing it with the person's financial biometrics using machine learning", is one prominent example. They are currently engaged in talks with the UK government to provide 'immunity passports' in response to Covid-19, and in April, closed a $100 million funding round (on top of a previous $100 million). We talk about the new environment, whether these changes will last, the prospect of an 'immunity passport', as well as the shape of the EU's Digital Services Act, the different global approaches to innovation, while balancing data governance and privacy concerns.
Husayn Kassei is CEO and a co-founder of Onfido. He founded Onfido in 2012 with two Oxford University contemporaries. Today Onfido has over 400 employees in offices across San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Paris, Delhi, Singapore and Albuquerque. Onfido has backing from investors including SoftBank, Microsoft, TPG Growth and SalesForce. Husayn has appeared on Forbes' annual 30 Under 30 list of top young leaders.
Birgitte Andersen is CEO and co-creator of Big Innovation Centre, a London-based think tank and hub that "promotes open innovation via challenge task forces." The Centre is the secretariat for the UK Parliament's All Party Parliamentary Groups on Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. She is Professor of Economics and Management of Innovation at University of London (Birkbeck), and she is currently on the EU Advisory panel for Horizon 2020 - Societal Challenge: Europe in a Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative and Reflective Societies.
Moderated by Leighton Hughes (CSFI)
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Private markets and economic recovery post-Covid: A discussion with Jonathan Ford (Financial Times), Pete Hahn (IoM FSA) and Peter Morris (Social & Sustainable Capital)
Why you should watch:
The private equity market is sitting on huge amounts of capital - 'dry powder', as they say. But it also faces legacy issues from its heavy involvement, post-GFC, in sectors (hospitality, leisure, airlines) that were badly affected by the coronavirus crisis. What can we expect as the global economy recovers? And is the growing power of 'opaque' private markets something regulators should be worried about?
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Jonathan Ford is City Editor of the FT, of which he was until recently a senior leader writer. He writes a regular column, the latest of which was on the need to 'drag private markets further from the shadows'.
Pete Hahn has recently retired as Dean of the London Institute of Banking and Finance, where he was also the Henry Grunfeld Professor of Finance. He is currently an NED at the Isle of Man FSA.
Peter Morris spent 25 years in financial markets in NY and London, before becoming research director at Social and Sustainable Capital. He is also an Associate Scholar at Oxford's Said Business School.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
The future of financial journalism: the digital threat/opportunity
Why you should watch:
Lionel and William are not just two of the most celebrated British financial journalists of the last twenty years, they are two of the best journalists that this country has produced. In this extended interview, they discuss the challenges that journalism - not just financial journalism - faces today from technology, social media, advertising and the pressures of demographics. No easy answers, but both the FT and WSJ are well-placed to lead a transition to a (largely) digital future.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Lionel Barber served as editor of the Financial Times from 2005 to 2020. During his tenure, the FT transformed itself from a print-led newspaper into a global, multichannel news organisation, winning multiple awards. In 2018 Lionel received the Media Society’s award for his outstanding contribution to journalism. An author and lecturer on international affairs, he also chairs the trustees of the Tate galleries.
William Lewis was until recently chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, overseeing growth in readership and revenues. Previous roles include Chief Creative Officer of News Corp, General Manager of News International, Editor of the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times Business Editor and News Editor at the FT. He was shortlisted for the post of Director General of the BBC.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Emerging Markets and the Covid-19 crisis: A discussion with Larry Brainard (TS Lombard), David Lubin (Citi/Chatham House) and Murat Ulgen (HSBC)
Why you should watch: This is an all-world line-up to discuss one of the most important issues created by the CV crisis. Post-GFC, emerging markets had bounced back as a result of globalisation, the rapid pace of growth in China and a generally benign interest rate environment in the developed countries. All of that is changing. Plus the CV is putting enormous strain on emerging markets at a time when export markets are shrinking fast and remittances are slumping. Are we facing a major crisis - and, if so, do we have the international infrastructure to handle it?
Larry Brainard is the Chairman of the EM Panel and a senior consulting economist at TS Lombard. He is a former co-head of emerging markets at Goldman Sachs, global head of EM research at Chase Manhattan, and chief international economist at Bankers Trust.
David Lubin is Head of Emerging Markets at Citi and an associate fellow at Chatham House. He is also the author of a recent book on EMs: 'Dance of the Trillions: Developing countries and global finance' (2018, Brookings).
Murat Ulgen is Global Head of EM research at HSBC. He was previously at Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Securities.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Link to the agenda: https://lnkd.in/ebhYNkD
Fintech Review: A monthly discussion forum, with Jemima Kelly (FT Alphaville) and Chris Gledhill (Secco)
Why you should watch: This is a quick overview of the major FinTech stories over the last month, 'curated' by FT Alphaville's Jemima Kelly and the CSFI's Leighton Hughes - always with an eminent guest. Key issues this month included:
- Revolut's buying spree - and what it means for the company's longer term strategy;
- Tom Blomfield's decision to step down as CEO at Monzo - and what that means;
- the 'halvering' (sic) of Bitcoin - if that means anything at all;
- the latest changes at Libra - including the change of name at Calibra and Temasek's decision to take a stake in the Libra Association;
- PayPal's move into the QR code space; and
- the anger around non-bank lenders' access to bounce-back loans.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jemima Kelly (FT Alphaville)
Jemima Kelly covers FinTech issues for FT Alphaville
Chris Gledhill is both the ceo and co-founder of Secco. He is also a regular commentator and adviser on FinTech issues, as well as a self-confessed 'futurist'. He was formerly a leading technologist at Lloyds Banking Group.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
This is the 10th edition of the weekly Economic Outlook series by the CSFI's director, Andrew Hilton, where he discusses his view on the current crisis, what impact it is having on the global economy and what we may be missing.
Andrew is a former World Bank economist, who also ran a small economic consultancy advising international clients, particularly in the Middle East. He has an MA from New College, Oxford, an MBA from Wharton, and an MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Thouron Scholar and Kent Fellow.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
e-Estonia: Europe's digital leader, a discussion with Taavi Rõivas, former Prime Minister and current vice-chair of the Reform Party, and Kaspar Korjus, former MD of the e-Residency Program and co-founder of Pactum.
Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Leighton Hughes (FinTech Lead, CSFI)
Taavi Rõivas was PM of Estonia from 2014-2016. He is currently vice-chair of the Reform Party faction. As PM, he was the key driver of Estonia's push to be the global leader in digital technology - including its 'once only' digital identity program and the e-Residency initiative.
Kaspar Korjus was the first MD of the e-Residency Program from 2014-2019. His latest initiative is Pactum - which allows companies 'to autonomously offer personalized commercial negotiations on a massive scale'.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Moderator: Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Sir Donald Brydon led the Independent review into the Quality and Effectiveness of Audit, which reported in December. Currently, he chairs Sage Group and two charities. Previous chairmanships include the London Stock Exchange Group and Royal Mail. In a 20-year career at Barclays, he became the head of BZW Investment Management.
Michelle Hinchliffe is UK Chair of Audit at KPMG. She joined the firm in 1985 and became a partner in 1997. During a stint in Australia she headed KPMG’s Financial Services practice. Michelle has led large global teams in the provision of external audit, internal audit and advisory services to many large financial services firms.
Natasha Landell-Mills is Head of Stewardship at Sarasin & Partners and serves on the Consultative Advisory Group to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the International Corporate Governance Network. Previously, she was Senior Analyst leading ESG integration and other policy work at the Universities Superannuation Scheme’s Investment Management arm.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Brussels for Breakfast 162
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Graham Bishop is the eponymous proprietor of grahambishop.com, and is one of the UK's leading EU-watchers. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute.
Brian Polk is the FS regulation leader at PwC UK for EMEA focusing on emerging EU financial services regulation.
John Rega is the financial services editor at Politico, having previously worked in London and Brussels with MLex and Bloomberg.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI)
Panellists:
Chris Huhne was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the Conservative/LibDem coalition government. he has since established a second (or third) career as an investor in and commentator on energy and climate issues, including involvement with Engaged Tracking and Zilkha Biomass.
Stan Dupre is the founder and CEO of the 2 Degree Investing initiative, and international climate change think-tank with offices in Paris, NYC, Berlin and London. He is also Convenor of the ISO14097 Working Group on Climate and Finance and a former member of the EU's High-level Group on Sustainable Finance.
Puleng Ndjwili-Potele is the banking project coordinator for UNEP's Finance Initiative, based in Geneva.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
This is the ninth edition of the weekly Economic Outlook series by the CSFI's director, Andrew Hilton, where he discusses his view on the current crisis, what impact it is having on the global economy and what we may be missing.
Andrew is a former World Bank economist, who also ran a small economic consultancy advising international clients, particularly in the Middle East. He has an MA from New College, Oxford, an MBA from Wharton, and an MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Thouron Scholar and Kent Fellow.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow
China and the EU and US in a post-Covid world: A discussion with Nicolas Véron (Peterson/Bruegel)
Moderator: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)
Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and at Bruegel in Brussels (of which he was also a co-founder). He has written extensively about banking, about financial regulation and about EU policy.
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Produced/Edited by Alex Treptow