About Khazanah Megatrends Forum

Just over a year ago, the world was at the brink of an economic crisis that many deemed to be worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s. Beginning with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, almost USD4 trillion was lost in the world’s equity markets and more banks and financial institutions failed. What started out as the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007 turned into a global financial crisis, facilitated by the very “efficiencies” that contributed towards the unprecedented growth of the world’s financial economy in the preceding decades. The massively over-leveraged financial economy effectively collapsed and threatened to carry with it, the whole real economy.

With financial and capital markets collapsing and prominent market institutions failing, it was governments that came to the fore, using tax payers’ monies and obligations to provide the much needed liquidity in the financial system while it convulsed. Notwithstanding the risks and costs of government borrowings, only a year later, the consensus is that there is now a solid floor underneath the world’s economy although its overall well-being is still suspect.

While the world seems to have averted an economic apocalypse, it remains unclear what “the new normal” is. The debate on what is the new “new” and what needs to be fixed, be it the lack or failure of regulation or ethical standards, is still ongoing. Could it be that the aversion of catastrophe preserved too much of the past? That a good crisis was wasted?

We have therefore raised the question “Apocalypse Averted?”  in this year’s Khazanah Megatrends Forum (KMF) to reflect the uncertainty that still hovers over the present environment and the subtext, “Reconfiguring the New Normal”, to seek clarity on what constitutes the New Normal and therefore, what needs reconfiguration. The key questions for KMF 2009 are:

  • What is the trajectory we are on, and where are we on that trajectory?
  • If the world’s economy has undergone a structural change, what is the new equilibrium?
  • What are the imperatives of this new equilibrium? To firms, society and the economy?
  • What is the new global economic model and how does one be competitive in this new model?

In order to answer these questions, the Forum is organized around four themes: Macro & Markets, Firms & Transformation, Competitiveness & Development, and Leadership & Society