The Future of Finance

posted in: Finance sector | 2

How do you sum up the future of finance in 10 minutes? Well I’ve been asked to do just that for an event in Cambridge on 22 October, which is part of the annual Festival of Ideas (http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/whatson/ideasfestival/).

The Festival is a series of talks across the University of Cambridge which are open to the public, in the second half of October, covering a very wide range of topics. The Future of Finance is sponsored by Barclays Corporate, who are providing a speaker alongside Colin Lizieri, Grosvenor Professor of real estate finance, and me. We each talk for about 10 minutes then have Q&A, chaired by Professor Willy Brown of the Economics Faculty.

I’ve been thinking about what to say and will be taking a fairly high level point of view. I won’t spoil the story for anybody attending but promise not to be kind to banks just because Barclays are sponsoring it.

Of course an easy, quick and reasonably accurate answer to the question, what is the future of finance (at least in a UK context) would be – there’ll be a lot less of it.

2 Responses

  1. Vazgen Abgaryan, MFin Applicant

    Dear Mr. Taylor,
    I think that current comments about the global financial situation are more based on speculative, rather than fundamental perspectives. After the recent Greek crisis the rapid decrease of EURO urged many investors to start reallocating their holdings into less volatile assets as a “shelter”. Of course the markets followed the path of the currency, themselves showing complicated movements. Nevertheless, what we can observe now- is yet unseen level of EURO boost- 11% growth in less than three months. This all is mainly due to EU initiative of establishing of a EUR 750 mio worth fund. I am now trying to imagine about the topic of your presentation – “The Future of finance in 10 minutes” and “Uncertainty and Disappointment” comes to my mind. It seems to me that fundamentally Greece has not recovered from the crisis yet. Distribution of financial resources and their correct and effective usage are two different questions. There might be a great chance that future EU countries economy development trends, particularly those of Greece, can disappoint hundredths of investors who are now glad to return back to their beloved assets in EU just basing their decisions on a short term positive signals from the market. And as the multiplication effect in economics, here too speculative approach raises multiplied either negative or positive expectations and outcomes than they do exist in reality. This all reminds me of Elliott waves- a small impulse on an overall larger decreasing wave.
    I really regret that I won’t be able to be present on your talk, but I hope you will post some of your slides here.
    Thank you!

  2. Michael Lamb

    This was a great event and you used a great analogy (plumbing, etc.) to explain the state of the system, plumbing fixed, investment not working etc. You made a very wide topic extremely engaging. I don’t think that the plumbing is yet fixed but I do see central banks holding onto the leaky pipes and still no plumber in sight.

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