Quantum Matters: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Quantum Cybersecurity
With a US inteligence report confirming that President Putin authorised a pro-Trump influence campaign in the latest election, China and the US in a stand-off, and the recklessness of ransomware groups tolerated, and at times abetted, by state actors, geographical risk is at its highest in a long time. See my latest column in The Quantum Daily on how we are skirting the edge. And what steps can be taken to mitigate risk.
An assassination in Sarajevo. The subsequent chain of events ultimately leads to a world war. An estimated 20 million people die.
From debt forgiveness to quantum
Empathy is the word that most marks 2020, a year in which companies worried about their employees’ mental health; the #MeToo movement forged ahead; #BlackLivesMatter took off, and Covid-19 lead to the rediscovery of community.
Empathy will continue to have an impact in 2021 by being present in two upcoming trends: debt forgiveness and supply chain responsibility. As for the third fundamental trend, quantum cybersecurity, its eruption onto the corporate scene as an applicable and commercial technology will ignite a bonfire of innovation.
Boards would do well to anticipate how these key factors will impact their companies in 2021 and ensuing years, even as the pandemic continues to upend business and politics.
From Competitor to Collaborator
Rare it is to hear business call for more government regulation. Yet this is the plea heard in private conversations with some of the largest financial companies in the UK, as they face undeliverable expectations to be at the forefront of solving rising inequality, racism and environmental disaster.
“The To-do list for corporates will continue to grow. We are having to deal with issues like racial injustice [because] governments aren’t,” says the CEO of a FTSE-100.
The New Paradigm
The summer of 1982 was a fine one in Venezuela, as I was chauffeured from party to party in Caracas and spent weekends lying in the sun on private islands or riding around estates the size of small countries. Not a word was said about my internship working in the office of a pulp and paper company, which was the reason for my visit.
President Hugo Chavez did not come to power until 1998. He destroyed the economy, a task ably carried on by his successor. But the seeds had been sown in the earlier decades amid the elite’s corruption, and failure to share the oil bonanza more widely.
Overcoming tribal challenges
The most successful species on this planet revels in the comfort of conformity. Just think of the boost and subsequent bonhomie that comes from a ‘successful’ meeting where everyone agrees. Yet with instability as the defining condition of our times, executives must evolve to become comfortable with discomfort.
Who, in the City, would hire someone who had failed a Maths O level? Twice. Yet that is the case of Sir Robert Stheeman, one of the most successful and trusted CEOs of the Debt Management Office, which is responsible for issuing UK government debt. It didn’t seem to affect the £2 trillion – give or take a few billion – that he has issued over 17 years in the job.
Sustainable Survival
Future-proofing your firm
Academics and far-sighted business leaders can go blue in the face calling for modifications to the capitalist model that has prevailed over the last 30 years and left too many behind. It takes riots in Chile, votes for populist authoritarians like Donald Trump and the emergence of a proto-fascist party in Spain for reality to hit home.
The decimation of the middle class through stagnant wages and job insecurity and the increasingly visible inequality of wealth were missed amidst the congratulatory backslapping of Davos Man, more focused on the huge growth in spending power in large emerging markets.
Those companies that want to survive and thrive within a world of constant upheaval must concentrate on transforming themselves. Sitting back comfortably and assuming politicians will bear the brunt of the anger is not an option.
The lightweight vs the heavyweight
Getting to be a heavyweight boxing champion takes many years of training, a top coach and clear rules of engagement. Talent may well be the least of it.
The UK is sadly bereft of all of these as it bravely makes its way in a world where the boxing ring is riven with cracks and the ropes are frayed and broken. Trade giants of the likes of Peter Sutherland and Pascal Lamy built the global trade structure brick by brick, compromise by comprise, backed most notably and most crucially by the US.
But President Donald Trump’s disdain for traditional allies and alliances extends to the World Trade Organisation and its carefully wrought rules, which are in any case due for modernisation in a services and digital centred world. The application of unilateral tariffs on China, leading to an exchange of tit-for-tat, is not the worst of it. Rather, it is taking the fight outside the ring, as Mr Trump did by pressuring Canada to arrest the CFO of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, or blackmailing Mexico with a progressive 5% tariff on exports if it did not do more to curb illegal immigrants from Central America.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week held out the exciting prospect of a trade deal with the US in 2020. Here are six home truths on global trade which he might wish to share with the nation.
The world awaits you
My speech to London School of Economics graduates
This is an edited version of a graduation speech given at the London School of Economics in July 2019.
Good afternoon, Graduates of the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is your day, and your careers, and your new lives, which start today.
“I was at the LSE. I graduated from the LSE. I’m an LSE Alumnus.” Those words are like saying “Open Sesame.” For the world lies open to you. You will end up working for the Government of China, for NGOs, for PWC or Goldman Sachs or Google. You will be entrepreneurs, social impact investors, data scientists, academics, prime ministers and presidents…we would be here all day if I kept on going.
Vintage heaven; vintage hell
The transformation of Fine Wines
As you raise a glass of Chêne Bleu Rosé on a sizzling hot summer’s day, spare a thought for the wine industry, which is facing a perfect storm.
Global warming, increasing regulatory pressures, and disinvestment, are set to dent if not destroy what had seemed a simple story of emerging markets growth and increasing quality which would lead global wine consumption to reach $207bn in 2022.
But the overall global wine and spirits market has slipped by -1.4% in the last five years, according to industry body IWSR, and disruption of the status quo is set to accelerate. In the US, 54 per cent of the population chose to abstain from alcohol, driven largely by 21-34 year olds, according to a 2018 Nielsen Survey.
Parallels with the tobacco industry are not an exaggeration. Imagine a photograph of a liver riven by cirrhosis on a plainly packaged bottle of wine, along with a warning that alcohol can abet breast cancer. Inside, the magnum of Château Kirwan lies, un-drunk and unloved.
How can the City recover its political capital?
The good news? The financial sector is no longer enemy number one. Its place has been taken by our fumbling politicians. The bad news? The City has not regained its political capital.
Post the financial crisis the City, meaning financial and professional services in the UK, lost the trust of the nation. A perfectly understandable and justifiable result, but one that must change because of the harm that is being done to our economy when the City has no advocates beyond its own members.
As the country grapples with Brexit, assembly lines of MPs appear on television defending the UK’s manufacturing base. Not one talks about the need to defend the City, despite it being responsible for over 13.5% of tax revenues – that’s a lot of hospitals, infrastructure and schools. It is also responsible for around 2.3m jobs – jobs that aren’t just in the Square Mile, or London and the South East, but also in Liverpool, Glasgow and Bournemouth.
Hank Paulson’s take on the financial crisis
Reading former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s gripping account of the 2008 financial crisis while playing at cowboys in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains was perhaps not as much of an incongruity as it seemed.
Lands of Opportunity: China & the City
Readers suggested that the last column’s negativity deserved a positive riposte. Herewith 6 reasons to be cheerful.
The Tale of a Whale
The New York tourist sitting next to me with the map of London spread out on his lap asked where he could find the London Whale.
Christmas reading: Churchill & Huxley
As we forcibly surf into the holiday season on a wave of consumerism, spare a thought for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which has somehow been overshadowed by another futuristic novel, George Orwell’s 1984.
Investor opportunities: Spain and China
If I were a man, I would spend my money on women and wine and wandering.
The CEO’s case for rocketing equity markets
A year after writing about the unsustainability of the French economy, I found myself this August once again amidst the glory-on-earth that is inland Provence.
The Tyranny of Numbers
I assume we will be seeing bankers in court, as UK Chancellor George Osborne is set to implement a reform suggested by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, namely introducing a new criminal offence: “reckless misconduct in the management of a bank”.
Of heroes and superheroes
As soon as I find it, I shall briskly dust off my Canadian passport and claim kinship with Mark Carney, the next Governor of the Bank of England.
Why France will fall nextft
This summer I met a French couple who work amicably together in their vineyard. They are raising their two boys good-humouredly. They socialise harmoniously.
The Bank of England’s Tucker time
Knees to chest in the womb position, I bounced in the harness attaching me to the two- inch thick, descending cable.