Why Trust Has Become The Infrastructure Of Global Capital

Every era of capital has an invisible layer that determines what scales. In the industrial era, it was rail, manufacturing and the ability to move goods at speed. In the digital age, it was networks, data and software. Today, these foundations still matter, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. As technologies accelerate, I believe the decisive layer for our era is trust. That is trust in institutions, market infrastructure, governance and the systems that sit between human judgment and machine capability.

This sentiment was unmistakable at HSBC’s Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong this April, where 5,000 delegates gathered to discuss the future of money, trade and technology. The summit is the newest addition to my annual circuit. Returning to Hong Kong was also personal, a chance to revisit the city where I spent an early part of my career. While much felt familiar, the world in which we now operate is not.

Upheavals such as that in the Middle East have a tendency to reroute capital​, and such volatility is no longer seen as just a temporary disruption. Rather, many see "global economic volatility" as a feature of the global economy, a view held by 95% of respondents to an HSBC survey (download required).

Against a backdrop of global turbulence, the mood is beginning to shift from defensiveness to purposefulness, and the underlying question that I'm seeing now underpins discussions in the finance sector is: Which systems, institutions and jurisdictions can still be relied upon as the rules of global capital are being rewritten?

.....

Click to read the full article at Forbes