As a continuation of the guest lecture series of the IMC Export Department, under the auspices of the chair for International Legal and Global Political Studies, Prof. Dr Anis Bajrektarevic has invited Dr. Anton Fink, Vice-President of the Austrian Marshall Plan Memorial Foundation and Senior Partner of DALE Investments.
In the light of the current troubled financial environment, Dr Fink held the presentation under the title “Limits to Growth or Limits to Greed”. He addressed not only the recent events but also gave the students a thorough insight into the impacts of the financial crisis and a future outlook for the financial environment.
Mr. Fink started off his talk with picturing the outcome of the financial crisis by taking the example of Iceland were banks caused a total debt of approximately 60 billion dollars which is more than 10 times the country’s GDP.
Furthermore, he elaborated on the triggering events of the troubled financial environment and pointed out the impact of human irrationality. According to his speech, the main reasons are the striving for easy money creation, lack of transparency of the market and numerous financial tools and the lack of regulations.
For the future, he predicts a new design of financial markets with more regulations. Nonetheless, the recession will still hold on for a while and will lead to currency adjustments. Although there is a lot of reflection on the past faults, errors will occur again. It is a fact that the economy is subject to cycles and fluctuations.
Even though the subject is very complex and hard to describe in such a short period of time, he managed to present the topic in a very understandable and clear way which was highly appreciated by the students.
The last part of the guest lecture was foreseen as a questions and answers session were students got the possibility to address issues like the influence of politics in the financial crisis, the possibilities to intervene for the European Union and the and the bail-out of Austrian banks. As the rest of the presentation, the Q&A Session, which turned out to be a vivid and informative discussion round, was highly appreciated and gave the opportunity to find out more about a particular matter of interest.
Dr. Anton Fink graduated from Johns Hopkins University Washington D.C. /USA in 1981 (School of Advanced International Studies, M.A.). Onwards a graduation of the Senior Executive Program at Columbia Business School in New York in 2003 followed. Mr. Fink gained his experience while working for banks in Germany and Austria before he joined the Bank Gutmann AG as a Member of the Board in 1992. Since 2005 he is appointed as partner and Managing Director at Dale Investment Advisors, the largest independent financial advisor in Austria. Furthermore, Mr. Fink is member of the board of trustees of the AFS-Scholarship-Foundation and Vice-President of the Marshallplan-Foundation.
Summing up after the event, content-intensive talks with fellow students and professors, with Ms. Eva Werner, the IMC Vice-Rector, and Mr. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, Export Chair and principal host of the event, our distinguished guest stated that he has been very impressed by our faculty’s interest. Dr. Fink also complimented the commitment and knowledge of our students as demonstrated in the questions and discussion with him. Dr. Fink finally expressed his willingness to come back soon.
The Guest lecture of Dr. Anton Fink was the 58th event organized under the auspices of the chair for international law and global political studies. The next event will take place on the 16th of December when the IMC EXP is hosting H.E. Pierre Viaux, the French ambassador to Austria.
Photos: Hermann Maglock
Text: Barbara F. & Christina P.
The presentation of Mr. Anton Fink can be found here.
