Basel: Szenarien für 2035

Szenarien für 2035 – ein Teil des Buches «Basel als internationaler Finanzplatz» von Dr. Alexander Ressos.

Scenarios for 2035

The preceding parts of this book have described how Basel became an international financial centre and what it is today. Part K looks forward. A book about a financial centre that ended with the present would leave its readers with a snapshot, although the decisions that bankers, regulators, investors, clients and their advisers take today will produce their effects over the coming decade. Those who structure a family's wealth, establish a fund, choose the location of a regional headquarters or negotiate a long-term supply contract for a pharmaceutical product must form a view of the world in which these arrangements will operate. Scenarios offer a disciplined way of forming such a view without pretending to know the future. Their purpose is to describe several internally consistent pictures of what could happen, so that decision-makers can test their strategies against each of them and recognise early which of them is beginning to materialise.¹

The method used in this part follows the tradition developed at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s and refined since then in corporate strategy and public policy. Each chapter first sets out the present baseline briefly, with cross-references to the earlier parts of the book. It then identifies the driving forces that are relatively predictable, such as demographic change or the diffusion of a technology, and separates them from the critical uncertainties whose outcome cannot be known today, such as the course of geopolitical rivalry or the result of a popular vote. Two to four scenarios are then constructed from different combinations of these uncertainties. Each receives a short name, a description of the world in 2035, a list of signposts that would indicate its arrival and an assessment of its implications for Basel's financial centre, its institutions, its clients and their advisers. The scenarios are the author's analytical constructs. They are deliberately pointed, because a scenario that differs only marginally from the present teaches little. No probability is attached to any of them. Speculative elements are marked as such.²

The horizon of 2035 lies about ten years ahead, a period long enough for structural change and short enough for today's institutions and many of today's decision-makers still to be in place. Five domains have been selected because they will decide Basel's position in that year more than any others. Chapter I examines digital money, from the projects of the BIS Innovation Hub to tokenisation and crypto-assets. Chapter II turns to the pharmaceutical industry, geopolitics and trade policy, which determine the economic base on which the city's wealth rests. Chapter III asks what will become of the Swiss banking model, including sustainable finance and access to the European market. Chapter IV treats the relationship between Switzerland and the European Union, whose package of agreements will shape the conditions for a border city more than for any other Swiss centre. Chapter V closes the book with artificial intelligence in financial services, including its consequences for the multilingual work that Part J described.

Notes

On the method of scenario planning, see Pierre Wack, "Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead", Harvard Business Review 63 (September–October 1985), 73–89, and "Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids", Harvard Business Review 63 (November–December 1985), 139–150; Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, New York 1991. To be verified. ↩
On the distinction between predetermined elements and critical uncertainties, see Wack, "Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids" (1985); Kees van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, 2nd ed., Chichester 2005. On the use of scenarios by central banks and supervisors, see the scenario work of the Network for Greening the Financial System and the BIS publications on the future monetary system. To be verified. ↩

About the book

This part belongs to Basel as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.