The financial world is changing. We cannot yet know how the interaction of two great forces – the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the economic rise of emerging countries – will reshape the world of finance. But we can make some informed guesses.
Start with the crisis. The 2000s had seen five powerful trends: a huge increase in financial assets relative to world output; a wave of financial innovation, particularly in derivative products; the rise of a new form of transactions-orientated, market-based finance, particularly in the US; the entry into the industry of new players, notably hedge funds and private equity; and the globalisation of finance, with a huge rise in the value of cross-border assets. All this change was driven, in turn, by liberalisation, by technological innovation and by developments in financial economics.
The immediate impact of the crisis was a reversal of many of the trends of the previous decades. As the McKinsey Global Institute has noted, 2008 saw a decline of $16,000bn, or 8 per cent, in the value of global financial assets, the largest absolute fall on record.