Nur-Sultan established its new financial centre, Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), in July 2018. Almost two years on, we spotlight latest developments and plans in Nur-Sultan and Kazakhstan.  

The webinar heard from Professor Dr Alexander Van de Putte, Chairman of Corporate Governance & Stewardship and Chief Strategy Officer, Astana International Financial Centre, Baur Bektemirov, Chief Economist, Astana International Financial Centre, and Professor Michael Mainelli, Executive Chairman of the Z/Yen Group.

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Hear from two Emerging Market Investment Professionals as they discuss their top industry challenges and the future opportunities for emerging economies as they see it.  

Speakers:  

Eric Anderson, Managing Partner & Head Of Investment Solutions, Milltrust International LLP. Mr. Anderson is Senior Portfolio Manager on the Global Emerging Markets Strategies and Head of Investment Solutions at Milltrust International LLP. He brings nearly two decades of international investment industry experience in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Mr. Anderson has spent nearly a decade focused exclusively on the Emerging Markets where he has extensive experience setting strategic fund allocations for institutional investors, researching local investment managers, providing investment research and full due diligence capabilities and structuring and seeding a number of fund strategies in these regions. Mr. Anderson has established a highly credible reputation within the Emerging Markets industry and is a frequent commentator at industry conferences and in the financial media. Mr. Anderson began his career as an auditor and performance analyst for fixed income, equity, and derivative products at State Street Global Advisors. Mr. Anderson is a candidate for CFA Level 3 and has a degree in International Economics from the University of California.  

Joyce Poon, Fixed Income Product Specialist, Gavekal. After graduating in business economics from University of California, Los Angeles, Joyce joined the Audit department of KPMG in Hong Kong, where she specialized in providing assurance related services to commercial banks and retail investment funds. With five years experience in public accounting, she left to help setting up a private equity company, with responsibility for fund administration and operations. In January 2006, Joyce moved to Gavekal, where she oversaw coverage of Asian economies and markets before becoming product manager for Gavekal Fixed Income products. She is a Certified Public Accountant in California and a Chartered Financial Analyst.  

James Pitcher, Chair for this event, is a senior securities operations manager, consultant and advisor, with over 35 years of investment banking experience. James was head of Network Management at Morgan Stanley for 10 years covering Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India.

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Z/Yen conducts an irregular series of short webinars, CommunityZ Chest, featuring people from its various communities and clubs, viz. technology, financial services, civil society, and business. These webinars provide an opportunity to meet people from the wider CommunityZ, to share ideas, and to make connections.

This CommunityZ Chest features Patrick L Young. Patrick has many interests, but ExchangeInvest.com is perhaps our best focal point for CommunityZ. In 1999 Patrick L Young wrote the first bestselling book on the topic of "fintech" "Capital Market Revolution!" at a time when financial technology was broadly ignored. Two decades on and with CMR! having proven prescient, the floor traders are all but forgotten, electronic money is the talk of the town and many other items predicted by Patrick's original book.

In "Victory Or Death!" Patrick L Young, discussed, 20 years into the "Revolution!" key topics examining what has - and has not changed - while looking at diverse issues such as the long decline ahead from the peak of banks, the future of exchanges and of course, how cryptocurrency (e-money was widely predicted in CMR!) and blockchain are realistically going to shape the future of finance in a hyper competitive world. Patrick is a former exchange CEO and lifelong entrepreneur whose current interests include publishing the unique daily newsletter of the bourse business "Exchange Invest." He is chairman of industry association Blockchain Malta and lives in Valletta.

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Z/Yen conducts an irregular series of short webinars, CommunityZ Chest, featuring people from its various communities and clubs, viz. technology, financial services, civil society, and business. These webinars provide an opportunity to meet people from the wider CommunityZ, to share ideas, and to make connections.  

This CommunityZ Chest features George Littlejohn, Senior Adviser, Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI). George Littlejohn qualified as an accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London before becoming a journalist with The Economist. He is a Senior Adviser to the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), the leading global professional body in the investment field, with over 45,000 members worldwide, focusing on its continuing professional development programme and on new financial clusters round the world. He has an MA in economics from Edinburgh University, and is a member of the CISI and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales.

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The journey to monetary gold and silver will traverse through the end of fiat money and financial markets. Alasdair explains why central banks are committed increasingly to debasing their currencies as a means of funding government deficits and in the hope they can prevent a contraction of business activity so that tax income will be maintained.  

Government bonds are wildly overvalued due to interest rate suppression and consumer price statistics designed to goal-seek 2% when credible independent analysis shows prices to be rising at more like 10%. With the Fed losing control over markets, we can expect US Treasury yields to rise accordingly, and the US Government to be demonstrably insolvent.  

History and sound economic theory tell us governments and central banks targeting inflation of financial assets eventually lose control over them and end up destroying their currencies.  Speaker: Alasdair Macleod, Head of Research, GoldMoney. Alasdair has had a career since 1970 in finance as a stockbroker, investment manager, banker and economist.

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The Employee Share Ownership Centre, Esop Centre, is a non-profit, subscription-based organisation which draws from over 30 years of experience to inform, lobby and research in the interest of developing all forms of broad-based employee share ownership plans in the UK and Europe. The Centre works with governments, the European Commission, businesses and employee organisations to build widespread support for employee share ownership and spread the wages of capital.  The first employee share ownership plan in the United Kingdom was launched in 1987 at Unity, the trade union bank. Esop Centre Life President, Malcolm Hurlston CBE, was inspired by a visit to the United States where he studied the use of employee stock ownership plans in American airline companies. He was instrumental in bringing about the first UK employee share plan. Drawing on these experiences, he formed the Employee Share Ownership Centre in 1988.  Speaker: Malcolm Hurlston CBE. Malcolm is the epitome of a social entrepreneur and Life President of the Employee Share Ownership Centre, Esop Centre. He conceived the trades union bank Unity in 1980, and founded the Registry Trust in 1985, the Employee Share Ownership Centre in 1987, and the charitable Foundation for Credit Counselling in 1992. Malcolm designed the Employee Share Ownership Centre to bring leveraged employee share ownership to Europe. Educated at Cambridge, he trained as a Russian interrogator during national service. He then worked as a journalist, television trainer and lobbyist. He is visiting professor at the University of Westminster. He is also President of the Foundation for Credit Counselling (now t/a StepChange) which he founded in 1992. His work in financial services was recognised in the Queen’s New Year Honours List 2013 when he was awarded a CBE.

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With the release of our much-anticipated GFCI 27 and GGFI 5 we do a deep-dive into the numbers supporting the index.  Interested in watching our webinars live, or taking part in the production of our research? Join our community at: https://bit.ly/3sXPpb5

Interested in watching our webinars live, or taking part in the production of our research? Join our community at: https://bit.ly/3sXPpb5 In 2018, Tim authored the report, ‘Get Smart About Scandals: Past Lessons For Future Finance’. The report informs you of the basic tricks that fraudsters, conmen, and the incompetent have used, over many centuries and offers recommendations based on policy, procedures, structures, and training. We look back at these past lessons and evaluate whether society has begun adopting these recommendations and improving it’s initiatives in the battle against financial crime.

Interested in watching our webinars live, or taking part in the production of our research? Join our community at: https://bit.ly/3sXPpb5 The Global Financial Centres Index has been tracking the development of the world’s financial centres since 2007 and is the authoritative guide to financial centre success.  The 27th edition of the index, produced in partnership with the China Development Institute in Shenzhen, was launched on 26 March 2020 through a webinar organised between London and Seoul, with the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government.  At the webinar we presented the results of GFCI 27 and how financial centres are progressing.  AGENDA 08:00 Welcome, Simon Culhane, Chief Executive, Chartered Institute For Securities & Investment  Opening Remarks, Beom Sik JANG, Professor Of Finance, Soongsil University  08:10 GFCI 27 Results, Mike Wardle, Head Of Indices, Z/Yen  08:40 Observations, Professor Michael Mainelli, Executive Chairman, Z/Yen  08:50 Questions  09:10 Closing Remarks, Professor Michael Mainelli, Executive Chairman, Z/Yen  09:15 Close

Sponsored by the Mava Foundation, and researched and published by Z/Yen, the fifth edition of the Global Green Finance Index provides the world’s most authoritative measure of the performance of financial centres in delivering green finance services.  The report launch took place via webinar on 24 March 2020 at 08:30 UK time.  The report, assembled by combining the views of financial professionals from around the world, with quantitative data commissioned and curated from over 130 sources, uses advanced statistical techniques to map the global spread of green finance.