UBS’s «Disruptive Technology CEO Summit» in Hong Kong attracted over 800 participants in an event focused on the journey of the future economy’s pioneer, described as the «survival of the fittest, fastest or first».
Of the 800-plus participants, over 250 were coming from various other countries to learn about the risks and opportunities from the region, according to the bank’s APAC co-head of wealth management, Amy Lo, most notably from the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, Southeast Asia and Japan.
«Many of the participants are our investment banking or wealth management clients. A lot come because they want to know about the trend that is disrupting their own industry, on one hand,» Lo said.
«On the other hand, they also want to look at direct investment opportunities. We have been talking to some of the family offices and in addition to traditional financial investments, they are interested in participating in early stage startups and future unicorns.»
Disruptive Technologies
The bank highlighted six major disruptive trends in the upcoming decade: 5G, fintech, artificial intelligence, smart cities, agritech and healthtech. But more than just the types of disruption, UBS underlined that it is, in fact, the accelerated pace of disruption that would play a more critical role in the coming decade.
Sundeep Gantori, equity analyst with UBS’s global wealth management CIO office, illustrated the pace by comparing the time required for various platforms to reach a user base of 50 million. Whereas it took many years to reach this milestone for airline companies (68 years), telephones (50 years), television (22 years), computers (14 years) or mobile phones (12 years), it took popular gaming app Pokemon Go only 19 days to achieve the feat.
«We are at the cusp of a major industry upgrade cycle,» Gantori said.
