Jacqueline Loh: Singapore - the gateway to Asia's bond market Opening address by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Global Borrowers &amp; Investors Forum - Asia, Singapore, 21 September 2017. * * * Toby Fildes, Global Managing Editor, GlobalCapital Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. 1. Thank you very much for inviting me to the Global Borrowers & Investors Forum – Asia. I am delighted that Euromoney has chosen Singapore to anchor the Asian edition of your flagship Global Borrowers & Bond Investors Forum. The Forum started over 20 years 2.  ago in London, and consistently attracts over 700 issuers, investors and financial intermediaries from around the world to exchange views on key issues facing global bond markets, to network and importantly, to close deals. Asia is the natural next franchise for the Forum. In 2016, Asia’s debt issuance at USD 1.3 trillion made up about one-fifth of global debt issuance, but at 20% y-o-y, grew twice as quickly. A focused Asian edition will help to make the Forum more accessible to issuers, 3.  investors and intermediaries based in Asia. Today’s programme is very topical, covering the deepening of Asia’s bond markets, financing Asia’s infrastructure and the rise of Asia’s green bond market, and features distinguished speakers like Governor Agus of Bank Indonesia and Sir Robert Stheeman, Chief Executive of the UK Debt Management Office. I will touch on these themes briefly. Asian bonds are a mainstream asset class .
Mr. Heikenstein discusses the Swedish financial crisis of the early 1990s Speech by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr. Lars Heikenstein, at a seminar arranged by the Swedish embassy held in Seoul, Korea on 15/7/98. Let me begin with a thank you to the organisers of this seminar. I am honoured to have the opportunity to share with you some experiences from the Swedish financial crisis in the early 1990s. 1. Introduction An IMF study from 1996 showed that in the past fifteen years, 132 of the Fund’s 182 member countries had experienced macroeconomic and/or financial crises. Today the figure is even higher. Crises are a recurring phenomenon. In spite of every effort to prevent them, I fear that crises will continue to occur. We should therefore use the opportunities to learn from each other, both in order to avoid making the same mistakes and to find the appropriate correctives sooner. Needless to say, there are no single “best solutions”. Crisis situations are always specific in some respects, not least with regard to their structural and political environment. Had they not been specific, they would probably never have occurred because they would have been “spotted” in advance. Having said this, however, there are a number of globally accepted “truths” about what constitutes a good response to crises. Discussions around crisis situations are usually divided into two parts: crisis prevention and crisis management. In this presentation I will be focusing on the latter.