Africa’s G20 Leadership Shaping The Future Of Global Finance

For the first time in history, Africa assumes the presidency of the G20, presenting, a distinctive opportunity to influence global financial priorities. In this exclusive dialogue, Sim Tshabalala, CE of Standard Bank Group and chair of the B20 Finance and Infrastructure (F&I) task force, speaks with Bethan Charnley, a principal at Oliver Wyman, to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to infrastructure investment across emerging markets.

They explore how the B20’s F&I policy paper recommendations aim to bridge funding gaps, lower the cost of capital, and foster blended finance solutions. Sim shares insights on Africa’s leadership role, the need to recalibrate the global financial architecture, and the collaborative effort that brought together 170 voices worldwide.

Against the backdrop of South Africa’s G20 leadership, this conversation provides timely insights into how business, policy, and regional leadership can come together to promote inclusive growth.

Bethan Charnley

Sim, it's so great to be here with you finally, and reflecting on the work that we've been doing together on the B20 over the past six months.

Sim Tshabalala

Wonderful, Bethan, thank you very much. Welcome to our building, the Standard Bank Head Office. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Bethan

Maybe to get us started, for those not familiar with the B20, it would be great to get a bit of an overview of what the B20 is and why it exists.

Sim

This year, the presidency and the hosting is in South Africa, and the B20 is a forum where business leaders have conversations about what is of interest and is salient at that particular time to business. They feed their thoughts and recommendations to the politicians, who then debate and discuss these, and they produce a communique. So, it's a big input into formulating global policy – what the world needs to solve global problems.

Bethan

And how did it feel to be asked to chair the B20 Finance and Infrastructure Task Force?

Sim

It was nerve-racking because, firstly, I didn't really know what it entailed. I knew that I needed to carve out time from a very busy job to do it, but it was a real privilege. I've grown as a human being, as I think have other members of the team. And it's just been wonderful to spend quality time with serious people solving for really big issues, which I think you and I are going to debate just now.

Bethan

How have the last six months been?

Sim

If I think back to the last six months, we started off trying to figure out what this job entailed and, working with the B20 Secretariat, I got to understand that I needed what was called a knowledge partner, which was Deloitte. Their job really was to help make sure that the process works.

Then the second bucket of work, or grouping of people, was the network partners. For that purpose, I chose Oliver Wyman and the International Institute of Finance (IIF). Oliver Wyman because they would bring the raw intellect and know-how and network. The IIF, similar, but slightly different, in that they have a convening power, in terms of large financial institutions globally. That team has been fantastic.

We then had to pick co-chairs, and I chose a group of people that were from different industries that were complementary but that would make a big difference. So, for example, Anne Richards, the CEO of Fidelity International. It was a coup to get her on our team. Then there was Daniel Pinto, the vice chairman and COO and president of JPMorgan, bringing again that international banking experience. Benjamin Hung, based in Hong Kong, President of Stanchart. Samaila Zubairu, CEO of AFC, Africa Finance Corporation. And then a couple other people included, Thierry Déau, and several other brilliant colleagues.

The deputy chair of the task force was my dear friend and colleague, Lungisa Fuzile, who was meant to step in and stand for me in instances where I was not available, but worked in partnership with me to make sure that we had a cadence.

We had a series of meetings, four meetings with the co-chairs and four meetings with the Task Force, and between the people holding the pen — yourselves — understanding the issues that we needed to address. We would debate these with the co-chairs, then debate our output with the Task Force, and we would iterate like that.Bethan

And I think the process of, as you said, iterating the paper over the past six months to really incorporate those different perspectives has been incredible. I think we had over a thousand pieces of input from across that cast list.

Sim

So in addition, as you recall, to that grouping of 170, we then also consulted big financial institutions and infrastructure institutions, and policymakers from throughout the world. And they came to the party. We consulted organized business from the United States, from other parts of the world as well. And, like you say, a thousand pieces of input, which all had to be integrated into roughly 10,000 words. And you managed to get it to 10,000 words.

Bethan

Just about! Well, that's a nice segue to actually talk about some of the content of the report and what we covered. From your perspective as chair, it would be great to hear a little bit more about your views on some of the most pressing challenges facing the financing of infrastructure, particularly in emerging economies, and what that's felt like and really how the paper sets about addressing some of these challenges as well.

Sim

So, what's the big problem? What are we trying to solve for? Well, the world spends $3 trillion per annum on infrastructure, and this infrastructure is necessary for productivity. However, there is a challenge on the supply side and on the demand side.

There are often projects that just will not be able to raise money because they are uninvestible for a variety of reasons, related to risk and so forth. Then, on the other hand, there is often insufficient supply.

In the case of the African continent, the gap between the infrastructure that's needed and the available funding is about $85 billion. There's $170 billion required per annum. There's 85 that you just cannot find.

The challenge then is how do you close that gap? Our task force spent that period of six months trying to solve this problem. We arrived at three sets of recommendations.

The first one is identifying critical infrastructure that humanity needs.

The second one is designing mechanisms that build partnerships between the public sector, the private sector and philanthropy to get money to these projects.

And the third one was how do you get money to flow from these projects into the real economy.

Bethan

One of the other conversations we had a lot with the co-chairs was around the changing geopolitical landscape. It would be great to get your views on how that changing geopolitical context and the risks around global financial fragmentation potentially impact infrastructure investment flows and different ways to mitigate that, that we explore in the paper.

Sim

I think we drew heavily from work that Oliver Wyman did with the World Economic Forum. To say, as the world fragments, what's going to happen to the movement of money throughout the world? I mean, in simple terms.

As the global financial community, and the world at large, what do we need to do to protect ourselves against that eventuality, that fragmentation?

The paper then goes through a series of recommendations, which include the rules that need to be put in place to make sure that money moves across borders, and the institutions that are needed for that purpose.

The example on the African continent is obviously the African Continental Free Trade Area, which will reduce barriers and help the movement of capital, goods, people, across the continent.

Bethan

Within the examples that you explore there, but more broadly, one of the other things that I thought was quite interesting about the development of the recommendations was this need to balance, on the one hand, the need for urgent action here, recognizing the infrastructure need that exists globally, but actually the complexity involved in making some of this happen. I would love your reflections on that balancing of finding areas to take action now, and also creating space for those critical long-term structural reforms.

Sim

I have to tell a little anecdote. I'm sure the players in the corporate drama won't mind me mentioning this, because it was quite a dramatic moment in our process.

I think it was our third or fourth meeting, and we thought, we're really at the end, and one of the co-chairs, I'm sure he won't mind mentioning — it was Daniel Pinto — who said, it's all well and good to have all of these recommendations, but you need to distinguish between short term and long term.

What are the critical things that can be done in the short term, and what are the longer-term things that can be done?

Clearly, there are things that are urgent now, to my mind, like project preparation, facilities, would be in that category if you ask me. But what else needs to start now, but is more in the longer to medium term?

And then, Bethan, looking at the longer term, how do you get the private sector, the public sector and philanthropy, and indeed, local financial institutions, banks and insurance companies, get them together to provide blended finance for these projects in order to close the gap that we spoke about a little bit earlier.

Bethan

In addition to grappling with the short term, long term aspects of the recommendations, one of my other reflections is the way in which we consistently grappled with the global versus Africa dynamic with the recommendations and the focus of the paper rightly needing the recommendations to speak to the global policy landscape, but recognizing this particular moment in time around South Africa's G20 presidency, the first presidency on the African continent. It would be great to hear your thoughts on the key recommendations in the paper that will really make the biggest practical impact in an African context, and with implications for the Global South more broadly.

Sim

Indeed, Bethan. I think one of the challenges of multilateral and complicated processes is that you need to get an outcome that will be supported by everybody.

Globally, there is a strong view that there's been enough regulation and that regulators, we pray, are putting the pen down. There's another view, which we have had to try and reconcile, which says global macroprudential regulations are drafted in a way that was addressing a set of problems that didn't exist in emerging markets, and in particular in Africa.

One of that set of regulations relates to the capital required for projects, and indeed the capital required for banks to take risk on multilateral and development finance institutions. With the result that we hold more capital for these projects and for these institutions than is consistent with the risk.

There's an argument to be made that the risk-weighted assets — and therefore the capital held in terms of Basel — need to be changed to make those projects consistent with the actual risk associated with them, which would result in banks investing in these projects or holding guarantees on these multilaterals and development finance institutions, would result in holding less capital and therefore the ability to lend more into these projects.

It was a difficult set of discussions, but I do think we got to consensus about making the case for these kinds of regulatory changes.

Bethan

And in addition to thinking about the deregulation dynamic and the sort of risk weightings, another area where it felt like this really came to the fore was in the conversations around cost of capital, which is obviously a particularly resonant issue within emerging markets. It would be great to hear your thoughts on why this issue in particular is so important, and some of the specific recommendations in the paper that we developed as well.

Sim

Again, the argument is simply that there is a mismatch between the risks that arise in doing business on the African continent and the perception of those risks. And one vector, or one dimension of that, is how ratings agencies rate African sovereigns, and therefore the price African sovereigns pay off the back of those ratings.

The argument is that there ought to be engagement with the ratings agencies, and for us to get to a point where they get to understand the riskiness of the African continent better, and align the ratings given with the actual risks that eventuate on the African continent and align that.

I have to say, I doff my hat to the ratings agencies. They've engaged rigorously. They've not been shrinking violets. They've said what needs to be said, but they've been responsive, which I think is great.

The second part of this debate, of course, is well, African sovereigns, too, need to do stuff to get their act together. Improve the quality of their data and their transparency. Be more sophisticated with investor relations. Reduce the size of the informal sector, collect their taxes, improve their fiscal and monetary policy formulation and coordination.

And hopefully, if those two processes were to be successful, we should see a diminishing in the cost of capital on the continent.

Bethan

I think that's a prime example where, almost within one topic or area, it's actually a combination of small targeted actions around opening up or expanding specific data set and really some quite complex, longer-term structural reforms that require commitment and long-term investment to see through.

Sim

And Bethan, they require dialogue. You know, one can be dismissive and say markets work, they're efficient, and ratings agencies and risk managers are applying their minds. We work with risk managers all the time, and we work with ratings agencies all the time. They're human beings. They use evaluative and statistical models that are built by human beings, and we ought to engage in how those are built and the results that they produce, because those results have real-life implications. A double b-minus rating, which should be triple B in the case of South Africa, costs South Africa 50 billion bucks a year. So it ought to be addressed.

Bethan

And worth putting that investment around that long-term program of reforms. I'd love to come back to this theme around collaboration and noting particularly the complexities of some of the challenges, the diverse perspectives that existed across the Task Force. Maybe just some more of your reflections as Chair of how it felt navigating through those diverse perspectives, working with critical partners as part of the process, and also why collaboration has been so critical, not just for the development of the recommendations, but how collaboration will play a role in the implementation of the recommendations going forward as well.

Sim

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the country that will be adopting these recommendations, or not, is the United States of America. One has to be respectful of the fact that they are going to be chairing the G20 and therefore the B20. And the ideological, intellectual, and strategic themes that are prevalent in the United States have to be paid homage to.

One has to understand them, respect them, and make sure that as you formulate these recommendations, be true to the principles that you are trying to achieve, but be cognizant of, and respectful of, the people that you will be handing the recommendations to.

We've worked hard to achieve both of these. We've worked hard to take account of the divergent opinions around the table. 170 Task Force members, and eight co-chairs, who often differed, and trying to thread a needle, in a way that, again, gives rise to the appropriate outcomes given the G20 themes: solidarity, sustainability and equity and equality — because this is important to South Africa, to Africa and emerging markets, but accept that that is not how everybody sees the world.

Bethan

And looking forward maybe to round off the conversation, as you said, this is a huge leadership moment for South Africa. Can you give us a sense of what the next couple of months look like in the run-up to the B20 and the G20 summit in November?

Sim

We are now moving into the phase of talking to people, explaining the paper to them and advocating for the recommendations.There have been a number of events already. Not in any order of importance, but there was a G20 event in Cape Town where, again, in partnership with Oliver Wyman and our other partners, we staged what is regarded as a very high-end and classy event, where we had the Ministry of Finance, and his staff and various other players, again discussing issues related to our recommendations. 

A couple of weeks ago, we had a fantastic event hosted by ourselves and Africa Practice at the Global Leadership Center of the Standard Bank, where 200 participants, again from throughout the world — from academia, from investment banking, from finance, from insurance, public sector, private sector. Regional, local, global organizations. It's really great. So, yes, collaboratively, working together with our partners, going out there to tell our story.

Bethan

You've got a busy schedule from now until November. I think, as we've also previously commented on, yes, it's hard work to write the paper, but the real hard work starts in this next phase in terms of advocating for the recommendations, building awareness around them, figuring out the practical action to drive implementation.

Sim

Actually, on reflection, even if people disagree with the recommendations, at least it will contribute to the multilateral, collaborative, cooperative spirit of humanity — and we're very, very proud of that. And it is our earnest hope that we've laid a good foundation off which our partners and friends in the United States will build.

Bethan

Thank you, Sim.

Sim

Thank you, Bethan.

This transcript has been edited for clarity

For the first time in history, Africa assumes the presidency of the G20, presenting, a distinctive opportunity to influence global financial priorities. In this exclusive dialogue, Sim Tshabalala, CE of Standard Bank Group and chair of the B20 Finance and Infrastructure (F&I) task force, speaks with Bethan Charnley, a principal at Oliver Wyman, to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to infrastructure investment across emerging markets.

They explore how the B20’s F&I policy paper recommendations aim to bridge funding gaps, lower the cost of capital, and foster blended finance solutions. Sim shares insights on Africa’s leadership role, the need to recalibrate the global financial architecture, and the collaborative effort that brought together 170 voices worldwide.

Against the backdrop of South Africa’s G20 leadership, this conversation provides timely insights into how business, policy, and regional leadership can come together to promote inclusive growth.

Bethan Charnley

Sim, it's so great to be here with you finally, and reflecting on the work that we've been doing together on the B20 over the past six months.

Sim Tshabalala

Wonderful, Bethan, thank you very much. Welcome to our building, the Standard Bank Head Office. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Bethan

Maybe to get us started, for those not familiar with the B20, it would be great to get a bit of an overview of what the B20 is and why it exists.

Sim

This year, the presidency and the hosting is in South Africa, and the B20 is a forum where business leaders have conversations about what is of interest and is salient at that particular time to business. They feed their thoughts and recommendations to the politicians, who then debate and discuss these, and they produce a communique. So, it's a big input into formulating global policy – what the world needs to solve global problems.

Bethan

And how did it feel to be asked to chair the B20 Finance and Infrastructure Task Force?

Sim

It was nerve-racking because, firstly, I didn't really know what it entailed. I knew that I needed to carve out time from a very busy job to do it, but it was a real privilege. I've grown as a human being, as I think have other members of the team. And it's just been wonderful to spend quality time with serious people solving for really big issues, which I think you and I are going to debate just now.

Bethan

How have the last six months been?

Sim

If I think back to the last six months, we started off trying to figure out what this job entailed and, working with the B20 Secretariat, I got to understand that I needed what was called a knowledge partner, which was Deloitte. Their job really was to help make sure that the process works.

Then the second bucket of work, or grouping of people, was the network partners. For that purpose, I chose Oliver Wyman and the International Institute of Finance (IIF). Oliver Wyman because they would bring the raw intellect and know-how and network. The IIF, similar, but slightly different, in that they have a convening power, in terms of large financial institutions globally. That team has been fantastic.

We then had to pick co-chairs, and I chose a group of people that were from different industries that were complementary but that would make a big difference. So, for example, Anne Richards, the CEO of Fidelity International. It was a coup to get her on our team. Then there was Daniel Pinto, the vice chairman and COO and president of JPMorgan, bringing again that international banking experience. Benjamin Hung, based in Hong Kong, President of Stanchart. Samaila Zubairu, CEO of AFC, Africa Finance Corporation. And then a couple other people included, Thierry Déau, and several other brilliant colleagues.

The deputy chair of the task force was my dear friend and colleague, Lungisa Fuzile, who was meant to step in and stand for me in instances where I was not available, but worked in partnership with me to make sure that we had a cadence.

We had a series of meetings, four meetings with the co-chairs and four meetings with the Task Force, and between the people holding the pen — yourselves — understanding the issues that we needed to address. We would debate these with the co-chairs, then debate our output with the Task Force, and we would iterate like that.Bethan

And I think the process of, as you said, iterating the paper over the past six months to really incorporate those different perspectives has been incredible. I think we had over a thousand pieces of input from across that cast list.

Sim

So in addition, as you recall, to that grouping of 170, we then also consulted big financial institutions and infrastructure institutions, and policymakers from throughout the world. And they came to the party. We consulted organized business from the United States, from other parts of the world as well. And, like you say, a thousand pieces of input, which all had to be integrated into roughly 10,000 words. And you managed to get it to 10,000 words.

Bethan

Just about! Well, that's a nice segue to actually talk about some of the content of the report and what we covered. From your perspective as chair, it would be great to hear a little bit more about your views on some of the most pressing challenges facing the financing of infrastructure, particularly in emerging economies, and what that's felt like and really how the paper sets about addressing some of these challenges as well.

Sim

So, what's the big problem? What are we trying to solve for? Well, the world spends $3 trillion per annum on infrastructure, and this infrastructure is necessary for productivity. However, there is a challenge on the supply side and on the demand side.

There are often projects that just will not be able to raise money because they are uninvestible for a variety of reasons, related to risk and so forth. Then, on the other hand, there is often insufficient supply.

In the case of the African continent, the gap between the infrastructure that's needed and the available funding is about $85 billion. There's $170 billion required per annum. There's 85 that you just cannot find.

The challenge then is how do you close that gap? Our task force spent that period of six months trying to solve this problem. We arrived at three sets of recommendations.

The first one is identifying critical infrastructure that humanity needs.

The second one is designing mechanisms that build partnerships between the public sector, the private sector and philanthropy to get money to these projects.

And the third one was how do you get money to flow from these projects into the real economy.

Bethan

One of the other conversations we had a lot with the co-chairs was around the changing geopolitical landscape. It would be great to get your views on how that changing geopolitical context and the risks around global financial fragmentation potentially impact infrastructure investment flows and different ways to mitigate that, that we explore in the paper.

Sim

I think we drew heavily from work that Oliver Wyman did with the World Economic Forum. To say, as the world fragments, what's going to happen to the movement of money throughout the world? I mean, in simple terms.

As the global financial community, and the world at large, what do we need to do to protect ourselves against that eventuality, that fragmentation?

The paper then goes through a series of recommendations, which include the rules that need to be put in place to make sure that money moves across borders, and the institutions that are needed for that purpose.

The example on the African continent is obviously the African Continental Free Trade Area, which will reduce barriers and help the movement of capital, goods, people, across the continent.

Bethan

Within the examples that you explore there, but more broadly, one of the other things that I thought was quite interesting about the development of the recommendations was this need to balance, on the one hand, the need for urgent action here, recognizing the infrastructure need that exists globally, but actually the complexity involved in making some of this happen. I would love your reflections on that balancing of finding areas to take action now, and also creating space for those critical long-term structural reforms.

Sim

I have to tell a little anecdote. I'm sure the players in the corporate drama won't mind me mentioning this, because it was quite a dramatic moment in our process.

I think it was our third or fourth meeting, and we thought, we're really at the end, and one of the co-chairs, I'm sure he won't mind mentioning — it was Daniel Pinto — who said, it's all well and good to have all of these recommendations, but you need to distinguish between short term and long term.

What are the critical things that can be done in the short term, and what are the longer-term things that can be done?

Clearly, there are things that are urgent now, to my mind, like project preparation, facilities, would be in that category if you ask me. But what else needs to start now, but is more in the longer to medium term?

And then, Bethan, looking at the longer term, how do you get the private sector, the public sector and philanthropy, and indeed, local financial institutions, banks and insurance companies, get them together to provide blended finance for these projects in order to close the gap that we spoke about a little bit earlier.

Bethan

In addition to grappling with the short term, long term aspects of the recommendations, one of my other reflections is the way in which we consistently grappled with the global versus Africa dynamic with the recommendations and the focus of the paper rightly needing the recommendations to speak to the global policy landscape, but recognizing this particular moment in time around South Africa's G20 presidency, the first presidency on the African continent. It would be great to hear your thoughts on the key recommendations in the paper that will really make the biggest practical impact in an African context, and with implications for the Global South more broadly.

Sim

Indeed, Bethan. I think one of the challenges of multilateral and complicated processes is that you need to get an outcome that will be supported by everybody.

Globally, there is a strong view that there's been enough regulation and that regulators, we pray, are putting the pen down. There's another view, which we have had to try and reconcile, which says global macroprudential regulations are drafted in a way that was addressing a set of problems that didn't exist in emerging markets, and in particular in Africa.

One of that set of regulations relates to the capital required for projects, and indeed the capital required for banks to take risk on multilateral and development finance institutions. With the result that we hold more capital for these projects and for these institutions than is consistent with the risk.

There's an argument to be made that the risk-weighted assets — and therefore the capital held in terms of Basel — need to be changed to make those projects consistent with the actual risk associated with them, which would result in banks investing in these projects or holding guarantees on these multilaterals and development finance institutions, would result in holding less capital and therefore the ability to lend more into these projects.

It was a difficult set of discussions, but I do think we got to consensus about making the case for these kinds of regulatory changes.

Bethan

And in addition to thinking about the deregulation dynamic and the sort of risk weightings, another area where it felt like this really came to the fore was in the conversations around cost of capital, which is obviously a particularly resonant issue within emerging markets. It would be great to hear your thoughts on why this issue in particular is so important, and some of the specific recommendations in the paper that we developed as well.

Sim

Again, the argument is simply that there is a mismatch between the risks that arise in doing business on the African continent and the perception of those risks. And one vector, or one dimension of that, is how ratings agencies rate African sovereigns, and therefore the price African sovereigns pay off the back of those ratings.

The argument is that there ought to be engagement with the ratings agencies, and for us to get to a point where they get to understand the riskiness of the African continent better, and align the ratings given with the actual risks that eventuate on the African continent and align that.

I have to say, I doff my hat to the ratings agencies. They've engaged rigorously. They've not been shrinking violets. They've said what needs to be said, but they've been responsive, which I think is great.

The second part of this debate, of course, is well, African sovereigns, too, need to do stuff to get their act together. Improve the quality of their data and their transparency. Be more sophisticated with investor relations. Reduce the size of the informal sector, collect their taxes, improve their fiscal and monetary policy formulation and coordination.

And hopefully, if those two processes were to be successful, we should see a diminishing in the cost of capital on the continent.

Bethan

I think that's a prime example where, almost within one topic or area, it's actually a combination of small targeted actions around opening up or expanding specific data set and really some quite complex, longer-term structural reforms that require commitment and long-term investment to see through.

Sim

And Bethan, they require dialogue. You know, one can be dismissive and say markets work, they're efficient, and ratings agencies and risk managers are applying their minds. We work with risk managers all the time, and we work with ratings agencies all the time. They're human beings. They use evaluative and statistical models that are built by human beings, and we ought to engage in how those are built and the results that they produce, because those results have real-life implications. A double b-minus rating, which should be triple B in the case of South Africa, costs South Africa 50 billion bucks a year. So it ought to be addressed.

Bethan

And worth putting that investment around that long-term program of reforms. I'd love to come back to this theme around collaboration and noting particularly the complexities of some of the challenges, the diverse perspectives that existed across the Task Force. Maybe just some more of your reflections as Chair of how it felt navigating through those diverse perspectives, working with critical partners as part of the process, and also why collaboration has been so critical, not just for the development of the recommendations, but how collaboration will play a role in the implementation of the recommendations going forward as well.

Sim

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the country that will be adopting these recommendations, or not, is the United States of America. One has to be respectful of the fact that they are going to be chairing the G20 and therefore the B20. And the ideological, intellectual, and strategic themes that are prevalent in the United States have to be paid homage to.

One has to understand them, respect them, and make sure that as you formulate these recommendations, be true to the principles that you are trying to achieve, but be cognizant of, and respectful of, the people that you will be handing the recommendations to.

We've worked hard to achieve both of these. We've worked hard to take account of the divergent opinions around the table. 170 Task Force members, and eight co-chairs, who often differed, and trying to thread a needle, in a way that, again, gives rise to the appropriate outcomes given the G20 themes: solidarity, sustainability and equity and equality — because this is important to South Africa, to Africa and emerging markets, but accept that that is not how everybody sees the world.

Bethan

And looking forward maybe to round off the conversation, as you said, this is a huge leadership moment for South Africa. Can you give us a sense of what the next couple of months look like in the run-up to the B20 and the G20 summit in November?

Sim

We are now moving into the phase of talking to people, explaining the paper to them and advocating for the recommendations.There have been a number of events already. Not in any order of importance, but there was a G20 event in Cape Town where, again, in partnership with Oliver Wyman and our other partners, we staged what is regarded as a very high-end and classy event, where we had the Ministry of Finance, and his staff and various other players, again discussing issues related to our recommendations. 

A couple of weeks ago, we had a fantastic event hosted by ourselves and Africa Practice at the Global Leadership Center of the Standard Bank, where 200 participants, again from throughout the world — from academia, from investment banking, from finance, from insurance, public sector, private sector. Regional, local, global organizations. It's really great. So, yes, collaboratively, working together with our partners, going out there to tell our story.

Bethan

You've got a busy schedule from now until November. I think, as we've also previously commented on, yes, it's hard work to write the paper, but the real hard work starts in this next phase in terms of advocating for the recommendations, building awareness around them, figuring out the practical action to drive implementation.

Sim

Actually, on reflection, even if people disagree with the recommendations, at least it will contribute to the multilateral, collaborative, cooperative spirit of humanity — and we're very, very proud of that. And it is our earnest hope that we've laid a good foundation off which our partners and friends in the United States will build.

Bethan

Thank you, Sim.

Sim

Thank you, Bethan.

This transcript has been edited for clarity