The 360 Academy organised a major investment conference at the Millennium Hilton Hotel on July 20, 2022 in Bangkok as part of their Million Clique series. David Gibson Moore chaired the conference in his capacity as Founder and Board Member of the 360 Academy and gave the opening address.

The theme of the conference was a critical one in these turbulent times, namely: what are the investment services and methodologies available to family offices and institutional investors in order to maintain and enhance wealth in an extremely challenging investment environment.

The 360 Academy is the first body to focus on these very important issues in Thailand and has had strong support from the outset of many most distinguished academics and investment practitioners, both from Thailand and internationally.

Other distinguished speakers at the event included:

• Kritchanon Aiyapanya, Secretary of Minister of Industry and Dr. Pisit Puapan. Director of Macroeconomic Analysis Division at Ministry of Finance speaking on the “global and local economic and industrial outlook”
• Nopporn Charoenkitraj and Theppachol Kosol, Tax Partners at Baker McKenzie Thailand, speaking on “the impact of tax laws in Thailand on institutions and UHNWIs”.
• Preecha Srirotjariya, Wealth Management – UBS Hong Kong, and Burin Adulwattana, Private Banking Business Head, KBank Private Bank, speaking on the “techniques of asset wealth management onshore and offshore” and
• Joe Teng, Managing Director AmiCorp Singapore Branch, speaking on “personalised wealth management strategies for institutions and family offices in Singapore under MAS oversight and regulation”.

The great challenge today of course is that the present confluence of events is largely unprecedented. Two of the most important short-term factors are (i) the economic slowdown induced by the COVID lockdown in China which of course is extremely relevant to Southeast Asian economies and (ii) the dramatic damage globally to world trade and the massive strain on global food supply e.g. wheat, corn and fertiliser caused by the war in Ukraine.

To this has to be added other major long-term factors: retreat from globalization and a return to various forms of protectionism, demographic aging and sustained political and economic backlash against immigration both causing reduction in the supply of labor, a new “cold war” between the US and China implying fragmentation of the global economy and balkanization of supply chains and finally the weaponization of the US dollar creating severe friction in international trade in goods, services, commodities, and capital.

This latter factor is also encouraging US rivals to diversify their foreign-exchange reserves and preferred trading currencies away from the dollar.

Stagflation, the situation where inflation rates are high and economic growth is slow, has now become the baseline case and conditions in all global markets are dominated by the current positioning and future policies of central banks.

All of these are factors that need to be taken into account when various investment decisions are taken. We had the opportunity of touching on all these aspects during the course of the conference.

We also examined the likely future impact on the investment scenario of the current state and future development of distributed ledger technology and particularly the status of crypto currencies.

In the words of the Chinese curse we live in extremely challenging times. All and more of these variables and the possibility at any time of unforeseen black swan events, make it essential that institutions and HNWIs take the best possible advice from the best available investment professionals. It is with this objective that the 360 Academy is developing and discussing such an incredibly relevant and focused series of programme.