New Financial Architecture
The Forum has looked at the driving forces shaping the global financial system and how these forces might affect governance and industry structure. Two reports on this subject have been published.
The first report The Future of the Global Financial System: A Near-Term Outlook and Long-Term Scenarios1, published in January 2009 explored: How the financial crisis, and the changes it has precipitated in financial regulation and supervision, might affect the near-term structure of wholesale financial markets and how these changes would likely impact players in the banking, insurance, and the alternative investments industries. Four long-term scenarios for the future of the global financial system up to 2020 were created.
Building on the first report, the 2010 publication dove deeper into select near-term challenges with the goal of exploring collaborative strategies for improvement. In particular, this report aims to assist those shaping the future financial architecture through a structured look at three questions that were identified as crucially important going forward:
1. Given the significant developments since the first publication in January of 2009, what will be the key forces driving the post crisis evolution of the financial services landscape in the coming years?
2. Having deployed a broad and deep set of tools to combat the crisis, how can governments now best meet the challenges of managing and resolving their newly acquired equity interests in financial institutions?
3. How can financial institutions begin to restore trust lost through the crisis?
Long-term Investing
Long-term investing has received fresh attention in light of the global economic crisis. Discussion has focused on how long-term investors – pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations, endowments, insurers and family offices – are helping to stabilize financial markets, impact the time horizon of corporate managers and fund important long-term projects such as infrastructure and the development of a low-carbon economy. Yet the capacity of investors for long-term investing and their ability to play these critical economic roles has diminished in recent years. The Forum’s report,...
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March 23, 2011
Benchmarking National Attractiveness for Private Investment in Latin American Infrastructure
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November 23, 2010
The Future of the Global Financial System - Navigating the Challenges Ahead
This report explores the forces that shape the financial services landscape in the near term and provides stakeholders with tools to approach two of the most pressing challenges of the post-crisis world: managing and resolving governments’ newly acquired equity interests in financial institutions and restoring trust in financial institutions.
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November 4, 2010
The Future of the Global Financial System: A Near-Term Outlook and Long-Term Scenarios
This initial report from the New Financial Architecture was mandated by the Forum’s investors and financial services communities in January 2008 to explore the driving forces that are shaping the global financial system in both the near-term and the long-term, and how these forces might affect governance and industry structure. This report is the outcome of phase one and presents a near-term analysis for key stakeholders and employs scenario thinking to describe four potential long-term futures for the global financial system.
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November 3, 2010
The Global Economic Impact of Private Equity Report 2010 Globalization of Alternative Investments: Working Papers Vol. 3
This volume of Working Papers expands on the previous two volumes by focusing on: The relationship between the presence of private equity investments in an industry and the growth rates of productivity, employment and capital formation. The record of government support for venture capital in terms of value creation, employment and innovation.
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November 3, 2010
Green Investing 2010: Policy Mechanisms to Bridge the Financing Gap
In this report, we provide an update on the status of investment volumes in clean energy and an overview of the different technologies that will contribute significantly to a future low-carbon energy infrastructure, as well as the key enablers that are required in order to allow those technologies to get to scale. We also highlight developments in the carbon markets and global negotiations (in Copenhagen and beyond) which affect clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. Finally, we provide an analytical framework to evaluate 35 different types of policy mechanisms designed to...
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November 3, 2010
The Global Economic Impact of Private Equity Report 2008: Globalization of Alternative Investments
The World Economic Forum’s research project on the “Global Economic Impact of Private Equity” sought to analyse private equity transactions, meaning equity investments by professionally managed partnerships that involve leveraged buyouts or other equity investments with a substantial amount of associated indebtedness (as opposed, for instance, to venture capital investments in start-ups). The goal was to complete a rigorous study of the impact of these investments around the world, prepared by a tightly organized consortium of leading international scholars.This volume of Working Papers...
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November 2, 2010
Rethinking financial risk
Jaime Caruana, General Manager, Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Basel; Ibrahim S. Dabdoub, Group Chief Executive Officer, National Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait; Global Agenda Council on Global Investment Flows; Robert E. Diamond Jr, President, Barclays, United Kingdom; Stefan Lippe, Chief Executive Officer, Swiss Re, Switzerland; Jonathan M. Nelson, Chief Executive Officer, Providence Equity Partners, USA; Guillermo Ortiz, Professor, ITAM (Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico), Mexico. Moderated by Suzanne Nora Johnson, Chair, Global Agenda Council...
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October 29, 2010
Financial Development
The Financial Development Report measures and analyses the factors enabling the development of financial systems in a number of economies around the world. It aims to provide a comprehensive means for countries to benchmark various aspects of their financial systems and establish priorities for improvement. It is published annually so that countries can benchmark themselves and track their progress over time.The Report does not attempt to inform current or short-term events, such as the latest developments affecting the eurozone. Rather, it aims to serve decision-makers in developing a...
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October 24, 2010
The Financial Development Report 2009
The world's largest economies took the biggest hit in the World Economic Forum's second annual Financial Development Report. Global financial centres still lead in the report's Index, but the effects of financial instability have pulled down their scores compared to last year. The United Kingdom, buoyed by the relative strength of its banking and non-banking financial activities, claimed the Index's top spot from the US, which slipped to third position behind Australia largely due to poorer financial stability scores and a weakened banking sector. The report ranks 55 of the world's leading...
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October 24, 2010
Sustainable credit
In the aftermath of the global recovery attention is focusing on how to ensure greater stability amid concern about the susceptibility of some banks to ongoing turmoil and after-shocks in the financial markets.As banks repair their balance sheets and deal with huge writedowns concerns remain that with markets still reluctant to support leverage the severely diminished flow of credit may undermine a global recovery. It is accepted that the credit recovery will be slow and that policy moves by lawmakers may be required to address credit constraints. The International Monetary Fund has...
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October 20, 2010
Financial Governance
The global financial crisis revealed major shortcomings in the system of institutional and regulatory governance. To move beyond the crisis, it will be necessary to improve current structures and develop a more fair and efficient structure of global governance that reflects changes in the global political and economic landscape.The principle of equal participation and inclusive cooperation should be followed in improving global governance. It is imperative to raise the voice and representation of developing countries.It has become a consensus of all parties to improve current structures...
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October 20, 2010
Alternative Investments
Through recent years, alternative investment asset classes such as private equity have become increasingly important pools of capital in the global financial system.Private equity activity in particular (defined as equity investments by professionally managed partnerships that involve leveraged buyouts or other equity investments with a substantial indebtedness) has accelerated noticeably. The total value of firms (both equity and debt) acquired in leveraged buyouts is estimated to be $3.6 trillion from 1970 to 2007, of which $2.7 trillion worth of transactions occurred between 2001 and 2007....
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October 20, 2010
The Challenges of Long-term Investing
The Challenges of Long-term InvestingWhile pension funds, foundations, endowments and sovereign wealth funds have long-term investment horizons, they often face significant challenges such as political and governance constraints.How can these investors address these challenges and deliver long-term value for their stakeholders?Key Points• Investment flows play a key role in global imbalances: over of the last decade, the developed world has become a large debtor to the developing world (most of the US$ 50 trillion in global debt is owed by Western countries).• There is no ...
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September 14, 2010
Investing in Infrastructure
Investing in Infrastructure• Ian Bremmer• Abdul Razak Dawood• Atul Kumar Rai• Irvin E. RichterFacilitated by • David SkillingSunday 28 SeptemberInfrastructure is an area of considerable growth in emerging markets. As of June 2008, infrastructure projects have attracted nearly US$ 90 billion from private equity institutions alone.There is growing realization within governments that strong infrastructure attracts foreign direct investment (FDI), improves competitiveness and encourages exports. A World Bank study has shown that poor infrastructure in some emerging economies could add as ...
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September 28, 2008
