Hear from Visa’s Principal Asia Pacific Economist Dr Simon Baptist
The Great Reboot presented
The current phase of the global economy is characterised by higher interest rates, more geopolitical tensions, new patterns of trade and connectivity, and an evolving landscape of global growth. While the global economy missed a recession in 2023 and will most likely avoid one in 2024, there are complexities from high interest rates, geopolitics, shifting supply chains and rising investment needs. Connectivity has always been one of the main ingredients for Asia’s success, and openness has been a pillar for the Australian and New Zealand economies. What are the emerging new channels of integration and what might it mean? For consumers, spending patterns are moving on from the see-saw cycles of the pandemic and this is changing the balance between goods and services, luxury and necessities, and digital versus offline routes to market. Visa’s Business and Economic Insights team is using our data to spotlight some implications, some of which will be shared during the session.
Location: Visa Melbourne Office — Rialto South Tower, Level 47, 525 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
Date: Tuesday 21 May 2024
Agenda: 4:00pm – 5:00pm: Simon Baptist introduction and presentation
5:00pm – 6:00pm: Networking drinks
This event is exclusively for FinTech Australia members. Please note that we reserve the right to cancel tickets of registrants who are ineligible.
BIOGRAPHY | Dr Simon Baptist – Principal Asia-Pacific Economist
Simon is the Principal Economist for APAC at Visa, responsible for analysis and thought leadership on economics and business in the region. An engaging and renowned economic communicator who can make economic ideas actionable and relevant to stakeholders across financial services, corporates and government, he briefs boards and executives, gives keynote presentations at large events, and has regularly appeared on international broadcast media.
His career so far has involved close to two decades of progressively more senior experience as a professional economist. Prior to Visa, he was the Global Chief Economist at the EIU, the world’s leading private sector economic forecaster, where he developed a global reputation delivdering economic and geopolitical insight. He also spent time as a lecturer at Oxford University and an economics consultant focussing on climate change, productivity and development economics.
He has a doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford, where his research investigated productivity and technology in emerging market manufacturing firms. This postgraduate study followed degrees in Economics and Science from the University of Tasmania. He has published a number of academic articles, including in World Development, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, University of Oxford working paper series, and Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, as well as leading or contributing to a large number of EIU publications, such as the Global Economic Outlook, and wrote the ‘From Our Chief Economist’ newsletter for nearly 10 years.