Making Sense Of Public Wealth

Making Sense Of: Hidden Sources of Public Wealth with Dag Detter

London Speaker Bureau’s Making Sense Of series looks to utilise its global network of experts, from a wide range of specialist areas, in order to highlight complex current topics that our clients may find of interest.

In this video, Making Sense Of: Hidden Public WealthRoy Sheppard interviews Dag Detter about the potential for governments around the world to leverage the potential goldmine of assets they are sitting on in order to fund public services.

Dag Detter has previously worked extensively as an investment banker, and led the restructuring of the Swedish government’s portfolio of state owned enterprises, representing some 25 per cent of the domestic economy, which yielded returns which outperformed the local stock market. He now specialises in advising on the restructuring of public sector balance sheets and the management of under-performing public assets. He assists governments and public institutions in designing and implementing strategies for restoring balance sheet strength.

A novel approach to Public Sector Finance will be required to help governments out of the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Using Public Wealth will be one of those new tools. Given the sheer scale of spending that this crisis demands, public policymakers, too, should consider a more creative approach. The pandemic presents a unique opportunity for governments to consolidate their finances by looking not just at spending and revenues, but also at assets and liabilities. By taking an integrated approach, as would be done in a corporate restructuring, governments can steer their way toward a stronger recovery without the need for excessive austerity and the social hardship that comes with it.

Detter is the co-author of The Public Wealth of Nations, selected as; The Economist’s Book of the Year 2015 and The FT’s best book of the year 2015.  In 2017 he published The Public Wealth of Cities, which states that economic vitality and financial stability to cities could be achieved by focusing on public wealth and shifting attention and resources from short-term spending to longer-term investments.

Roy Sheppard is a conference moderator and a former BBC news anchor.