Choice of Bangkok as the venue for Wharton forum 'sign of confidence'
Bangkok will be hosting the 2015 Wharton Global Forum this week, which will draw more than 500 participants, including executives from across the world.
"This is the first such forum to be held in Thailand, which shows that there is foreign confidence in the country," Kongkiat Opaswongkarn, chief executive officer of Asia Plus Securities Plc, said.
As an alumnus of Pennsylvania University’s Wharton School, Kongkiat along with a group of other Thai Wharton alumni, last year urged the university to consider Bangkok as a venue for the 47th forum despite the country’s political upheaval.
This year, the three-day forum entitled "Asia in a Borderless World" will be held from Thursday to Saturday at Shangri-la Hotel.
Shatetha Terdprisant, director and managing director of McKinsey & Company, also a Wharton alumnus, said alumni will get to share the experiences of leading business people and academic knowledge from lecturers.
Content up for discussion will be related to macro economy moving toward micro economy, infrastructure, consumers, telecommunications, housing and materials, alternative energy, and tourism, as well as Myanmar which is at a crossroads.
Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha will make the opening remarks for the plenary session on Friday, which will be followed by a talk on "Asia’s Complementary and Competing Economic Collaborations" that former Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan will participate in.
Other speakers include Simon Tay, chairman of Singapore Institute of International Affairs, and Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor of Central Bank of Malaysia. Suthichai Yoon, chairman of the Nation Multimedia Group, will be moderating this session.
Other topics on the agenda for Friday |are the "Future of Asian Tourism: Upcoming Trends in an Evolving Region", "Asean Infrastructure: Building a Corridor to the Global Economy" and "Navigating the Transpacific Partnership: The Firm Perspective".
On Saturday, there will be discussions on topics such as the consumer power of Asia’s emerging middle class, international equity markets and the financing of innovation and growth.
There will be a total of 37 speakers of whom 13 are international CEOs, 12 Thai CEOs and 12 top professors, including Geoffrey Garret from the Wharton School, John Brown from Agoda, Assaf Tarnopolsky from Linked-In, Karn Trakulhoon |from SCG and Pailin Chuchottaworn from PTT.
Since 1993, Wharton’s global forums have been held 19 times in Asia; 15 times in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, 11 times in Latin America and once in North America.
