I was invited to give the opening keynote at Finance Malta’s Annual Conference 2024. I emphasized the need for financial centers identifying their nation-state’s unique strengths and leverage these characteristics to build a distinct global presence. This approach allows them to create competitive advantages that resonates internationally but draws from their organic competencies.
Key insights from the presentation included:
- Shift from institutional towards personal wealth management: Financial centers are moving from institutional finance to a stronger focus on personal wealth management. This includes the dramatic rise of single family offices in regions like the US, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
- Historical economic shifts: Countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong achieved success through strategic investments in industry and technology, transitioning from underdeveloped to prosperous economies.
- The rise of the competent state: In my travels, I have been noticing the increasing number of states, some which were dysfunctional only a few years ago, where the governments have been actively building economic capacity, sometimes at the expense of the country’s entrepreneurial class, which made me conclude that it is desirable that the state should be not-too-competent so as to give the entrepreneurial class some leeway to thrive and contribute to the overall economy.
- Information as the core asset of financial centers in the future: I argued that financial centers have moved from trade to money and is currently moving towards information as the core asset that define them. If this is the case, we can and should identify the key elements of information as the core asset and build out from there what the financial center of the future would look like. I threw in contributions from the gaming, NFTs and the dynamics of the crypto industries.
I had fun putting this speech together, drawing from geo-politics, history and economics as well as from my experiences in and travels to the many different financial centers around the world.
