“As the shift of wealth from West to East gathers momentum, it is clear that the very nature of money and wealth is changing”, it was noted in a presentation at this year’s FundForum conference in Berlin.
The presentation delved into preparations for delegates’ 10-year plan of what the implications of “RIP Facebook, Hello WeChat” are for their customers, asset allocation, and business models. It also revealed what is going on behind the scenes, signalling key trends, and agile strategies in the industry.
According to the speaker, Amazon is starting to stumble over, and it faces challenges due to many copycat competitors in China, such as Alibaba.
Amazon also has a big gap in its global footprint and they outstrip everybody in the US but China is coming up to a new US dollar equivalent commerce, the speaker revealed.
Meanwhile, Facebook has a generational issue; for ‘Generation Z’ they are perhaps more interested in Instagram, for example. Netflix, however, is on the up, the speaker noted.
The speaker then discussed Baidu, a Chinese technology company, and explained that it made its business by buying Google and copying their platform. It then improved it over time and then kicked them out, although Google is still there in a small way. But, Baidu essentially owns that market, the speaker said.
The attention of the presentation then shifted towards Sony, where they have seen a pivot in subscription revenue model (away from hardware).
The speaker also discussed Tesla and revealed that it is worth twice as much as Ford despite the fact that Ford made six billion cars last year at a $7.6 billion profile while Tesla made 100,000 cars at a $2 billion loss.
In a survey on whether or not Americans expect there to be driverless cars to be common in 10 years, it was revealed that some 19 percent believed that this would happen within 5 years, while 34 percent believed that this would happen in six-ten years.
Additionally, some 18 percent think that driverless cars will emerge in 11-15 years, 10 percent for 16-20 years, and 15 percent voted that it would be longer than this.
The focus then shifted towards China, and it was revealed that Apple has turned over its Chinese icloud operations and encryption keys to China, making the threat of hackers a lot worse, the speaker warned.
China requires businesses -that move to China- to give them their top secret information, and Apple’s move has been expected since last year when they announced their partnership. Apple users with icloud accounts registered in China will now have their data hosted by GCBD centre, the speaker explained.
“The issue here is privacy, if you are an icloud subscriber in New York, for example, but bought the phone in China then the Chinese government has the right to access that data,” the speaker said.
Discussions on consumption in China was also a theme of topic. The speaker explained that China has internal consumption and so they do not need to be an export anymore as they can generate wealth in internal consumption, and they want to replicate this trend in India.
“Payments is the holy grail. Payments are the lifeline of finance, China is going to move heavily into the global finance system, and in fact, it already has,” the speaker commented.
The speaker also discussed automation, and asked delegates their thoughts on “What if China automated every aspect of asset management?”
Concluding, the speaker said, “Within the next 15 years, nearly 15 percent of the global workforce may need to switch jobs because of this.”
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