On day three of the Global Boardroom we continued to discuss key issues in Asia such as India's health system and if Hong Kong can continue to flourish as a financial hub. We also covered the business of space and whether cryptocurrencies really are the future of money. Here are a few key takeaways:
Key issues to be discussed when looking at the future of Indian healthcare include the war between big pharma and generic drug producers and the balance between public and private service provision and funding
K. Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India: “If India had not resorted to process patenting rather than product patenting in the early 1970s, the Indian drug manufacturing sector would not have blossomed to the extent it did.”
The US economy is seriously overheating and coming out the other side of this period is going to be a difficult process to navigate
Larry Summers: “We are now looking at an economy that is running red hot, there has never been the vacancy rate that we now see . . . We’ve got the hottest labour markets that we’ve ever had… and yet monetary policy right now is substantially looser than it was a year ago.”
There is a lot of optimism that regulation on the crypto market will be effective, to do so it will have to be tailored to this new asset class
Faryar Shirzad, Chief Policy Officer, Coinbase: “Regulators have really begun to look very carefully at crypto generally and stablecoins maybe in particular, but they’re doing it within the limits of their statutory authority and also the limits of what they know. And so I think we’re in a period now where you’ve got regulators increasingly looking at crypto and digital assets and blockchain technology and trying to fit it as best they can within the rule set and the statutory framework for the traditional financial sector.”Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner, SkyBridge Capital: “The regulatory rule book in the United States has always generally got things right.”
Space has changed the way we live but there needs to be tighter regulation and governance as its commercial sector grows
Simonetta Di Pippo, Director, UN Office for Outer Space Affairs: “In order to ensure long-term sustainability, we need to have all the players at the same table and that is extremely important because the moon is unregulated for the time being from a multilateral perspective, and so global governance is really one of the key topics for the near future if we want to preserve space for future generations.”
Dan Hart, President and CEO, Virgin Orbit: “There is so much to do in space and that private interest and investment can drive progress forward . . . space has changed the way we live and a lot of people don’t even realise.”
To catch up on the sessions you might have missed read our full summary here.