Past Event

Paul Donovan

12 April 2019

Paul Donovan is the Global Chief Economist of UBS Global Wealth Management. He is a member of the Global Investment Committee, a UBS Opinion Leader, a sponsor of UBS Speak Up and a UBS Pride Ally.

Paul is responsible for developing and presenting the UBS economic outlook, marketing the UBS view on economics, policy and politics around the world. He regularly appears in the print and broadcast media, and is a reluctant Tweeter on economic issues. Paul represents UBS as part of the B20 Trade and Investment Working Group. Paul started at UBS Investment Bank as an intern in 1992, and was Global Economist before moving to Global Wealth Management in August 2016.

Paul has an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, sitting on its investment committee, and is a member of the Vice-Chancellor’s Circle of Oxford. He holds an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of London. Paul is also a co-founder of the Peter Culverhouse Memorial Trust (a cancer research and patient care charity). He is an amateur heavyweight boxer, and keen skier.

Paul co-authored “From Red to Green? How the financial credit crunch could bankrupt the environment” with Julie Hudson, published in August 2011. “Food Policy and the Environmental Credit Crunch: From Soup to Nuts”, also co-authored with Julie, was published in September 2013. Paul contributed to “How the world really works: the economy”, a children’s guide to economics published in May 2014. His book "The Truth About Inflation" was published in April 2015, with a Spanish language version published in September 2018.

What Paul will be discussing:

• The way the world works is changing – what economists call the fourth industrial revolution. This is a significant shift for the global economy, with economic, social and political consequences
• These changes mean that economic data is less and less reliable
• Politics is likely to remain polarised, focused on single issues, and thus volatile
• Success as a company or country depends on maximising what economists call "Human capital" (there are Brexit implications here)
• Jobs change, but we do not all end up working for robot overlords
• Investment changes, which may give a misleading impression of what is happening in an economy like the UK
• Trade changes, which means much of the Brexit negotiations are about 50 years out of date