15/01/25

From Features

Global Shifts: Geopolitics and IFCs

With a slew of important elections, ongoing regional conflicts, and destructive climate disasters characterising 2024, the international finance industry has been holding its collective breath to see the aftermath of one after another unprecedented global events. This feature is therefore well-timed to update, inform and educate, with features that explain, debate, and forecast the key trends and issues affecting the world of wealth management.

Geopolitics

Vox Populi: How 2024’s Elections Have Precipitated A New Geopolitical Chapter

Paul Marshall
Pragmatix Advisory
Mark Pragnell
Pragmatix Advisory

Alcuin of York could have very well been writing about what we have seen in 2024 when he wrote to Charlemagne in 798 to express his dismay at how the voice of the people had been misinterpreted as the voice of God, and that “the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness”.   We have certainly seen a sharp shift towards populist politics in this year’s general elections across the G7 and beyond, but whether that shift leads to the prediction made by Alcuin remains to be seen. What we do know, though, is that the general elections this year are the latest point on a broader set of geopolitical changes that have been in train since the global financial crisis of 2007/08. International financial centres have little control over these changes, and have to continue to adapt and evolve if they are to thrive in what is emerging as a new world order.

Alcuin of York could have very well been writing about what we have seen in 2024 when he wrote to Charlemagne in 798 to express his dismay at how the voice of the people had been misinterpreted as the voice of God, and that “the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness”.  

We have certainly seen a sharp shift towards populist politics in this year’s general elections across the G7 and beyond, but whether that shift leads to the prediction made by Alcuin remains to be seen. What we do know, though, is that the general elections this year are the latest point on a broader set of geopolitical changes that have been in train since the global financial crisis of 2007/08. International financial centres have little control over these changes, and have to continue to adapt and evolve if they are to thrive in what is emerging as a new world order.

Three Scenarios For The Future

In our 2022 report for BVI Finance, Beyond Globalisation, we set out three potential future global ec…