安本集团主席Sir Douglas Flint：主动应对世界不确定性挑战，为全球增长创造机遇

范智廉爵士 (Sir Douglas Flint, CBE)在全球财富管理论坛2023年会上的发言

各位来宾，下午好！

承蒙全球财富管理论坛邀请，再次参加今年的全球财富管理论坛年会。此次年会为我们就全球经济和金融业面临的挑战和机遇话题讨论及时地提供了一个平台，我谨代表安本集团（abrdn）向与会各位分享我们的看法。

在接下来的两天里，有多位部长、官员和全球金融领袖将作主题发言或参加小组讨论。由此可以看出，本次年会对我们的行业具有十分重要的意义。

最重要的一点是，这次年会将推动我们通过必要的合作携手抓住机遇，应对世界面临的共同挑战。

正如市长阁下刚才所提到的，安本集团所推动的全球投资未来运动（Global Investment Futures campaign）等倡议在推动政府、监管机构和行业参与者之间的合作方面将发挥关键性的作用。

在近期所发生一系列的系统性重大情况和事件背景下，当前环境可谓“挑战与机遇并存”。各国政府和金融业当前面临的诸多挑战都发端于刚刚过去的这一年。首先，我想简要回顾一下过去这一年。

事实证明，就全球范围内的意外事件而言，2022年是近年来最为罕见的一年。

最重要的是，俄乌冲突所造成的混乱、破坏和人类苦难景象，其规模在欧洲属第二次世界大战以来仅见。这加剧了原本已经非常脆弱的地缘政治紧张局势，特别是在美国和中国之间。

能源成本飙升累及所有经济部门，迫使各国通过实施财政干预来防止商业崩溃和难以被接受的生活成本困境。食品供应成本高企面临中断高企困境。而且，刚刚结束休眠、正处于爆发期的通胀普遍被证明并不属于过渡性质，这一情形使得各国大幅调高了通胀预期。

大多数西方主要经济体的中央银行通过提高政策利率以缓和通胀预期。愈发明显的经济跨境依赖性促使全球各国对供应链的复原力展开详尽审查。中国在2022年底放松了“动态清零”政策。尽管西方长期以来一直鼓励中国这样做，但其经济、卫生系统和人口逐渐适应与病毒共存的过程在短期内可能会增加全球供应链的不确定性。在英国，我们经历了前所未有的政局不稳定。截至2022年10月底，我们在四个月内换了三位首相和四位财政大臣。2023年以来，大部分公共部门受到罢工潮冲击，经济增长受到威胁，通胀面临显著上行风险。

正是在这样的背景下，金融行业不得不规划和调整我们的商业模式，重置投资优先次序，以满足客户和顾客需求，并使自身业务在未来更具可持续性和韧性。

通过回顾和反思，我们注意到，我们所刚刚经历的这一时期为经济、金融市场乃至我们自身的业务提供了最为宝贵的压力测试，从中汲取的经验和教训弥足珍贵。

也许对我们来说，最重要的教训就是商业模式必须具有韧性。作为投资者，基本面分析无论任何时候对于通过投资过程实现长期价值而言都具有重要的意义。

以上提及的意外的和戏剧性事件，对年内不同时期的市场水平和资金流都产生了极大的不利影响。由于人们回避风险资产，整个行业的股票基金都出现了前所未有的回撤水平。早期的科技企业发现更难吸引资金，估值明显下降。

摆脱去年各项事件的影响进行重建对我们的行业来说是一项艰巨的挑战， 鉴于大多数国家通胀对生活成本的影响，作为我们的原材料之一的西方国家流入投资和养老基金的储蓄有所放缓。另一方面，石油和天然气生产国产生的巨额石油美元盈余现在正再次流入全球经济。

鉴于所需基础设施投资的巨大规模，新冠肺炎大流行后的全球经济重建是一个机遇。人口老龄化、寻求长期资产的养老基金、从历史角度看仍然很低的现行利率，以及希望自己的储蓄能够为渴望留给自己后代的世界作出贡献的人们等等，共同为提供必要能力创造了必要的环境和动机。鉴于挑战的规模如此之大，当务之急是尽快建立大规模投资。

一年之前，我们可能希望疫情期间建立的高储蓄池能成为这种投资资金的主要来源。但随着各国通过调整房地产市场价格以应对不断提高的利率水平，这些储蓄资金也面临着利率长期升高的风险，进而影响抵押贷款的服务成本并引起家庭财富的减少。

因此，随着我们走出这一时期，当务之急之一就是要通过创造投资能力来为更加公平、可持续性更强的复苏提供支持。同样重要的是提高复原力——但是，新冠肺炎大流行、针对俄罗斯的制裁，以及优先考虑国家经济增长的愿望，这一切所带来的额外挑战是，我们应在多大程度上将提高供应链复原力置于提高经济和社会的复原力之上？以及应如何防止复原力规划被用作民族主义和保护主义的掩护手段？

到目前为止，我们所经历的情况并不能令人鼓舞，以供应安全、供应链复原力和国家安全关切为由采取的限制性政策措施有所增加——国家补助也被用于吸引科技和气候转型等关键领域的工业活动。

尽管我在发言的开头部分中曾提到相关事件的严重性及其所产生的综合性影响，这些事件及其不确定性的影响都是相对短暂的，并且从历史经验来看是可控的；相比之下，由于未能在将全球变暖限制在1.5摄氏度的议定目标方面取得进展，我们面临的生存威胁继续有增无减。去年在沙姆沙伊赫举行的联合国气候变化大会第27次缔约方会议（COP27）基本上未能扩大一年前各方就逐步淘汰化石燃料作出的承诺 ，尽管各方都强烈表示有必要这样做。会议取得的主要成就之一，是与会各方最终达成了一项已谈判了30多年的协议，旨在设立一个“损失和损害”基金，以支持最易受气候变化影响的国家，但其细节和财政资金来源仍有待商定。并且鉴于国内优先事项的重要性，这些问题可能会进一步被拖延，而这对全球经济构成重大风险。我们可以观察到更多的极端天气事件，这些事件正在对受影响的经济体产生毁灭性的影响，并正在促使移民持续以越来越大的规模流向气候更舒适的地区。各方迫切需要达到议定目标，但2022年碳氢化合物产能领域也出现了投资复苏，以增强供应链在离开俄罗斯供应后的韧性。我们还看到，依赖石油和天然气活动的美国各州越来越多地抵制金融公司对未来该行业内投资的限制。由于监管和法律风险不断增加，金融部门内的支持净零计划议程变得更加复杂，这些风险来自对虚假宣传的不准确描述，即所谓的“漂绿行为”。

所有这些行动都使金融行业为实现净零目标作出贡献的承诺变得更具挑战性，但作为一个行业，我们必须义无反顾。

当前我们需应对诸多挑战，但同时也面临重大机遇：未来三十年内，全球为缓和和解决气候变化问题每年需要投入至少数万亿美元；重新配置供应链以保障能源和食品供应安全；更换低效的运输和能源供应与分配基础设施；为基础科学和应用研究提供资金以创造目前无法获得的解决方案；以及重建乌克兰。以上这些机遇，将在未来几年额外带来数千亿美元的投资需求。

投资行业比以往任何时候都更有能力将资本转化为满足社会期望的生产性资产。政策制定者终于开始着手寻求扫清限制投资流动的障碍，这些障碍制约着投资从长期储蓄资金池流向基础设施以及长期资本和以科学为基础的资产。现在，行业领袖们将资本投资优先用于股票回购，尤其是在欧洲；就业前景良好，尤其是对年轻工人而言，因为大批原本临近退休年龄的老年工人在疫情期间提前退休。此外，许多曾令人担忧的大趋势在2023年预计都将有所改善，但有可能出现不如市场预期的情形；市场对今年年底前通胀放缓和利率前景持否定态度，但央行的紧缩阶段尚未结束——工资压力依然强劲，职位空缺率和“辞工”率仍在上升；欧洲的天然气价格已经回落到俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之前的水平之下，天然气储存量的增加、温和的冬季以及2022年亚洲需求的减少使欧洲能够获得大量的液化天然气——但这些条件可能都不会再次出现：尽管仍低于通胀水平，大多数国家的工资水平都在上升；虽然消费者支出具有弹性，但房地产市场指标表明仍需谨慎；中国取消了大多数新冠肺炎限制措施——现已完全取消——中国经济的重新开放将对全球增长和缓解通胀及时产生积极影响；所有这些因素都将提振商业和消费者信心，从而释放出所需的投资资金。

我对未来仍持乐观态度——应对气候变化影响、向低碳未来过渡、保护生物多样性和建设共享繁荣的世界需要数以万亿美元的巨额投资，这将为全球增长创造巨大的机遇——同时也需要我们的协调和合作。

最近发生的一系列事件使我们进一步认识到世界面临的主要挑战——气候变化、生物多样性丧失、疾病的大流行、人口增长、国家之间和国家内部的经济不平等，以及所有这些因素对移民流动的影响。所有这些问题都不是各国通过单独甚至区域性行动所能解决的。我们需要通过能够排除地缘政治竞争不利影响的国际协调框架来集中彼此的资源。在当前环境下，这似乎是一个颇具雄心甚至可能不太现实的目标，但如若不能实现此目标将会产生可怕的后果，因此这一目标值得我们大家共同为之奋斗。

我们面临的终极挑战，就是要利用这段充满不确定性的时期，商定必须采取的集体行动，表明我们对全球化的支持，共同一致采取紧急协调行动，实施能够充分利用公共和私人投资池能力的政策和监管改革。

再次感谢能有机会在本次年会上分享我们的看法。

谢谢！

Remarks from Sir Douglas Flint at the GAMF 2023 Annual Conference 

Good afternoon. 

On behalf of abrdn, thank you to the Global Asset Management Forum for the chance to once again participate in this year’s Annual Conference and add our thoughts to this timely discussion on the challenges and opportunities for the global economy and financial industry.

The significance that the Annual Conference has in our industry is clear from the ministers, officials and global financial leaders who are participating in the keynote speeches and panels over the next two days. 

Most importantly, the conference fosters the collaboration we need to address the world’s shared challenges and seize the opportunities in front of us. 

As the Lord Mayor mentioned, initiatives such as the Global Investment Futures campaign – which abrdn is proud to support – will play a crucial role in these collaborative efforts between governments, regulators, and industry players. 

Challenges and Opportunities is a very apt description of the current environment which has been brought about by the recent combination of systemically significant conditions and events. Let me start by reflecting on the year recently ended which has framed the challenges now facing governments and the financial industry.

2022 turned out to be a year like no other in recent memory in terms of unexpected events across the globe. 

Most significantly, the Russia-Ukraine conflict brought scenes of chaos, destruction and human suffering on a scale not seen in Europe since the second world war. Already fragile geopolitical tensions intensified, in particular between the United States and China. 

Energy costs rocketed, impacting all sectors of the economy and requiring fiscal intervention to prevent business collapse and unacceptable cost of living hardship. Food supplies faced disruption and suffered high levels of cost inflation, and inflation generally turned out not to be transitory and emerged from dormancy to reset expectations significantly higher. 

Central banks increased policy interest rates across most of the major Western economies to temper these inflationary expectations. Critical economic cross-border dependencies became apparent, more apparent, precipitating an exhaustive global examination of supply chain resilience. China’s unwinding of its Zero-Covid policy at the end of 2022, while long encouraged in the West, may in the near term add to global supply chain uncertainties as its economy, health systems and population adjust to living with the virus. And here in the UK we saw unprecedented political instability, with three Prime Ministers and four Chancellors within a four-month period to the end of October and entered 2023 facing strikes across much of the public sector, threatening both economic growth and inflation.

So, it is against this backdrop that we in the financial industry have had to plan and adjust our business models and reset investment priorities to meet client and customer needs and to make our own businesses more sustainably resilient for the future.

As we stand back to reflect, we observe that this period has provided the most invaluable stress test to economies, financial markets and indeed to our own business; the learnings are invaluable. 

Perhaps the most important lessons for us are the need for business model resilience and, as an investor, the enduring importance of fundamental analysis to deliver long-term value through our investment processes.

The unexpected and dramatic events noted above had understandable adverse impacts both on market levels at various points in the year and on flows as an unprecedented level of withdrawals was made from equity funds across the industry, as risk assets were shunned, and early-stage science and technology ventures found capital much harder to attract and saw valuations fall markedly. 

Rebuilding from the events of last year is a challenge for our industry as one of our raw materials – the flow of savings into investment and pension funds in the West has slowed given inflationary impacts on the cost of living in most countries. On the other hand, extraordinary petro-dollar surpluses have been generated in the oil and gas producing countries and are now recycling into the global economy.

Rebuilding the global economy post pandemic represents an opportunity given the scale of infrastructure investment required. Demographic ageing, pension funds seeking long term assets, historically still low interest rates and individuals seeking to see their savings contribute to the world that they aspire to leave for future generations all combine to create the environment and motivations to make the necessary capacity available. Given the scale of the challenges it is urgent that investment at scale builds as soon as possible.

A year ago, we might have hoped that the high saving pools built during the pandemic would be a major contributing factor to funding this investment, but these savings are also at risk to a longer period of elevated interest rates impacting mortgage servicing costs and a reduction in household wealth as property markets adjust prices to reflect these higher interest rates. 

So, as we emerge from this period, creating the investment capacity to support a more equitable and sustainable recovery is a priority. Equally important is improving resilience – but one of the additional challenges brought about by the combination of the pandemic, the expansive sanctions targeted at Russia and a desire to prioritise national economic growth is - to what extent do we give improving supply chain resilience precedence over greater economic and social resilience – and further how do we prevent resilience planning being used as a cover for nationalist protectionism?

So far, the experience is not encouraging with an increase in restrictive policy measures justified on the grounds of security of supply, supply chain resilience and national security concerns – with state aid also being directed towards attracting industrial activity in key areas of science and technology and climate transition.

Notwithstanding the severity and combined impact of the events noted in my opening paragraphs, all of the events and uncertainties described there are relatively short lived in their impact and are manageable within historic experience as opposed to the existential threat that continues to grow relatively unabated from failure to make progress on constraining global warming to the agreed target of 1.5C degrees centigrade. COP 27 held last year in Sharm el-Sheikh largely failed to expand commitments made a year earlier with regard to phasing out fossil fuels in spite of all the strong statements made around the necessity to do so. The one major step forward was the agreement of a deal that has been sought for over thirty years to launch a fund for ‘loss and damage’ to support nations most exposed to the consequences of climate change, but details and financial funding remain to be agreed and given the prominence being given to domestic priorities these must be at risk of further delay. This poses a significant risk to the global economy. Already we can observe much greater incidence of extreme weather events which are having devastating impacts on the impacted economies and are contributing to the risk of a steady but dramatically expanded flow of migrants towards more hospitable climates. Notwithstanding the imperative of reaching the agreed target, 2022 also saw the resurgence of investment in hydrocarbon capacity to build resilience of supply, absent inflows from Russia. We also saw growing pushback by many US states which are dependent on oil and gas activity against financial firms restricting future investment to this sector. Supporting the NetZero agenda was further complicated in the financial sector by the increasing regulatory and legal risks from allegations of inaccurate descriptions of claimed impacts – so-called ’greenwashing’.

All of these actions are making navigating our industry’s commitments to contribute to the Net Zero targets more challenging but as an industry we must remain resolute to doing so. 

Against the many current challenges lie the opportunities – addressing climate change both in mitigation and solution requires trillions of dollars of investment annually for the next three decades at least; reconfiguring supply chains, building security of supply for energy and food, replacing inefficient infrastructure for transportation and energy supply and distribution, funding the science base and applied research needed to create the solutions not available today, rebuilding Ukraine  – all of these add further hundreds of billions of dollars of investment demand in the coming years. 

The investment industry is better equipped than ever to steward capital into productive assets that meet society’s expectations of it. Policy makers are at last seeking to unblock obstacles that constrain investment flows from long-term savings pools into infrastructure and patient-capital science-based assets. Industry leaders are now prioritising capital investment over share buybacks, particularly in Europe and employment prospects are strong, particularly for younger workers as many older workers who were close to retirement brought that forward during the pandemic. In addition, many of the mega trends that have caused concern are forecast to improve in 2023 - but not without risk of conditions deteriorating from market expectations; markets are discounting moderation in inflation and interest rate outlooks by the end of the current year but the Central bank tightening phase is not yet complete – wage pressures remain robust and vacancy and ‘quit’ rates remain elevated ; gas prices in Europe have fallen back below the levels seen before the invasion of Ukraine benefitting from a build-up of gas storage, a mild winter and reduced Asian demand in 2022 which allowed Europe to secure large amounts of LNG – all conditions however that may not recur; wage levels are rising in most countries although below inflation and although consumer spending has been resilient, housing market indicators suggest caution;  China’s removal of most Covid restrictions – all Covid restrictions now – and the re-opening of its economy will in due course be positive for global growth and the alleviation of inflation; and all these factors should boost business and consumer confidence unlocking investment funds.

I remain optimistic about the future – the trillions of dollars of investment needed to address the impact of climate change, the transition to a lower carbon future, protecting biodiversity and building a world of shared prosperity will create huge opportunities for global growth though collaboration and cooperation – indeed both will be required. 

Recent events have reinforced the recognition that the major challenges facing the world – climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, population growth, economic inequality between and within countries and the impact of all of these on migration flows – these are all incapable of being solved by nations acting alone or even regionally – resource pooling will be needed with an international coordination framework that sets aside geopolitical rivalries. In the current climate, this seems an ambitious, maybe even an unrealistic aim, but the dire consequences of not achieving this make it worth striving for.

So the ultimate challenge is to use this uncertain period to agree the necessary actions collectively, confirming our support for globalisation, standing together on the urgency of a coordinated response and implementing policy and regulatory reforms that will harness the fullest capacity of public and private investment pools. 

Thank you for allowing me to contribute to this conference. 

Xiè xie.