January 22, 2016
“We have five rock stars of finance today,” said Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, leading a high-profile conversation on what the future holds for finance at the World Economic Forum this week. Panelists included such heavy hitters as Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem and IMF Deputy Managing Director Zhu Min.
Debate centered around key questions: is regulation creating new problems, even while making the banking system safer? Is the lightning-fast pace of innovation in tech upending the financial world? And what happens when mobile phones act like bank accounts, as they increasingly do in emerging markets?
We’ve shared some behind-the-scenes pictures and key quotes from the session below – and you can also watch the entire discussion.
Audience members watch the “Future-Proofing Global Finance” session.
photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
“We have 19MM mobile phone bankers, 30MM computer bankers… and the amount of volume on those devices grows at 20-30% a year.” – Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News, chairs the debate.
photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
“If you look in China… the kind of things Alibaba is doing [with] consumer to consumer lending – this is a brave new world.” – Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman
Audience members listen to the debate.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
“The regulators should never be at the front of technological development… Are we adjusting legislation quickly enough? No. That’s probably a good thing, because you don’t want to overregulate it before you understand it.” – Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem
Audience members watch as an electronic screen shows a Bloomberg sign.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
“To the extent that large chunks of the population are using their SIM cards as their store of value – so it’s actually Vodafone who is the deposit-taker – somebody should be paying as much attention to protecting that consumer as they pay attention to protecting a bank consumer.” – Standard Chartered Bill Winters