YPI Webinar: How Public Wealth can benefit society as a whole?
“What if – it didn’t take higher taxes to build bridges and repair crumbling infrastructures?”
How Public Wealth can benefit society as a whole? National and local governments own a potential goldmine of assets, mostly in the form of real estate and state- or municipal-owned companies, with a value almost 3 times larger than public debt. While managing debt has become a matter of great concern during the financial crisis, public wealth remains opaque and largely ignored. The polarized debate between privatizers and nationalizers has missed the most important point – the quality of asset management.
Recording of event: watch here
Presentation materials: see presentation
Speaker Biography:
Detter is specialized on public commercial assets and works as an advisor to local and national governments, investors and international financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank to help unlock public wealth. He has also worked as an investment banker and advisor in Asia and Europe and served as Non-Executive Director on a range of boards of private and public companies.
As the former President of Stattum, the Swedish government holding company and Director at the Ministry of Industry responsible for government-owned enterprises, he led the comprehensive restructuring of the national government portfolio.
He is the author of The Public Wealth of Cities and The Public Wealth of Nations – The Economist and the Financial Times Best Books of the Year 2015, co-author with Stefan Fölster.
Pre-Reading:
Wishful Thinking Won’t Help Health or Infrastructure: While cities, counties and states scramble to find new revenue streams, governments are sitting on a virtual “gold mine” — the public assets which they don’t even know they own. Estimates by the IMF indicate public assets are worth at least twice annual gross domestic product. The Bond Buyer
For Economic Growth, the World Needs Accountants: Professional management of public assets could, across advanced economies, generate annually more revenues than governments receive in corporate tax collections. This could also multiply the funds available for infrastructure investments or the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. International Federation of Accountants
U.S. Local Governments need more Financial Independence What if higher taxes or local government austerity were not required to build bridges, repair crumbling infrastructures and provide for citizens? While cities and urban counties scramble to find new revenue streams, they are sitting on wealth they don’t even know they own. The Bond Buyer