00:00I mean, obviously, we are at a very interesting time, a confluence of geopolitical and macroeconomic
00:05stresses with the war in the Middle East, but also great optimism towards the transformation
00:10of technology across the border and around the world with AI. So what do you think is
00:15dominating the discussions right now? I think, Steve, you've kind of nailed it. There's a lot
00:21of different topics that people care about. On the optimistic and the curious side, it's really AI.
00:27What does it mean? Well, we've been talking about it for four years at these conferences,
00:31but every year you come back to new elements of what AI means. And a lot of the panels we've
00:38been having here the last 24 hours have been tilting the conversation a little bit more towards
00:43what does it mean for society? How are we going to implement this in a fair way? How can governments
00:49regulate it? Whereas a year ago, it was really much more optimistic around what are the technologies
00:54that are going to work? What is it? Yeah. So the evolving conversation,
00:57but that's always, I think it's going to be with us for years in terms of how we discuss it.
01:00Well, naturally, I've never met a banker. And I'm not saying your clients here are all bankers. You
01:06have a cross-section for many industries. But every banker I meet, they all talk about bonuses and they
01:11talk about jobs. And jobs has been on the front of mind of a lot of bankers recently, whether it's
01:17Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan or others, they're all talking about ramifications of AI on the rank and
01:24file, if you will. Iqbal Khan, your boss here in Asia Pacific here in Hong Kong, talked about those
01:29ramifications. But he thinks it's going to be the productivity side and the complement that AI will
01:35to the current business models that you have. How do you see it? And how do you see the conversation
01:41from business leaders who have to weigh the job side of it and the reductions, redundancies versus
01:47productivity? Well, we're already seeing a lot of the productivity benefits coming through. I mean,
01:51even, I'm sure you use it, Steve, as well. We can see things just becoming a little bit easier,
01:56how you can surface information, how you can join the dots. So there's a tremendous benefit I think
02:01we're already getting on that. That's a lot of what Iqbal was referencing yesterday. The conversations
02:06we were having yesterday with Kevin Rudd, with Simon Johnson, the Nobel laureate from
02:102024, who spends a lot of time thinking about how can you augment work, not to just think about the
02:16negatives of it, but also the new jobs that are going to come along, the new processes. And it's
02:20very difficult, I think, today to forecast what will happen five years from now in terms of those
02:26new roles. I think I'm right in saying that 60 years ago, 60% of the jobs that exist today
02:32didn't
02:33exist 60 years ago. So it's very difficult to forecast and think about what those things will be.
02:37But it's top of mind in terms of how are we going to shape it? How can society shape it?
02:42How can we
02:43make sure that it's fair? How can we make sure it augments work? And that's what a lot of the
02:47conversations have been about with the thought leaders here over the last 24 hours.
02:51Yeah, I mean, businesses like certainty, right? And right now we're in very uncertain times,
02:55not only with the AI, but the geopolitical field with war. I mean, we're already 12 weeks into the war
03:01or thereabouts. And there doesn't seem to be necessarily a firm conclusion to that. But yet
03:08the negative aspects of it, the oil price shock, I'm sure energy resiliency has been talked about
03:14here. That adds a layer of uncertainty, not just the AI and jobs, but the inflationary impact that
03:21it tends to be a little bit more sticky. Yeah. And when we're trying to put a conference on like
03:25this, I mean, why do people come? They want to come and see lots of companies. We've got, I think,
03:29400 corporates this year speaking to investors, but they also want that content that you get in
03:33the panels. And so when you're trying to, I don't like using that word curate, but when you're trying
03:38to think about what are the topics that people care about, it is a combination, as I said, about AI,
03:43but it's all those geopolitical issues. And so we were very lucky yesterday that we had Megan
03:47O'Sullivan, who's got tremendous insights into the Middle East and energy from her time at the
03:52State Department, sharing our thoughts on energy and oil. Of course, how does this feed into inflation
03:58and interest rates? And we had our central bankers talking about that. So these are all,
04:02it's this combination of bottom-up themes and top-down themes that you want to pull together
04:08to give people a very rich sense of what matters.
04:10I think it was Iqbal Khan who mentioned yesterday, and he actually asked me that,
04:15do you notice a tone shift as well towards the mainland? Obviously, you know, China is a few
04:21years out from COVID. Hong Kong is a few years out from obviously the turmoil and the protests we had
04:26here. But it seems as though the tone towards China is changing to the plus side as well. The
04:32opportunities with the technology, the economy, yes, it still has some domestic consumption issues,
04:37but it seems like there's a lot more confidence in what's happening across the border as what we've
04:41seen reflected in the stock market here and the IPOs of their own indigenous innovation. Have you
04:46felt that?
04:47100%, Steve. And you can actually quantify this. If I look at the conference two years ago,
04:52Chinese market hadn't been doing quite so well up until that point. If I look at the number of
04:57overseas-based investors that are coming to this conference, last year it was up,
05:01I think, 80% from the previous year. This year it's up another 60%. That is demonstrably due to
05:08the fact that people have got more optimism, not just about Asia Pacific, but also about China,
05:13which is clearly such a massive part of this region, this economy, and of course, the market.
05:18And wealth management, obviously, a huge part of UBS's business. And we just had that story we
05:24talked about with Amy Lowe earlier this morning about, according to Boston Consulting's latest numbers,
05:29you might have seen it, that Hong Kong has overtaken your home domicile of Switzerland as the number
05:35one wealth hub in the world. That also tells you about the confidence that we're seeing and the
05:39opportunities in the stock market and also family money, single-family offices moving more funds here.
05:45Well, this region, as we know, has been growing faster than the rest of the world
05:50for many decades. And as that happens, you're going to get more wealth created. It's one of the
05:54reasons this is such an important business for UBS, as of course, our home market is as well. So
06:00I think it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if the economies keep growing, wealth will
06:06accrue, people will need the wealth services, and we want to be here to provide that.
Comments