Global Macro Sessions
Thursday, October 15, 2026, 08:00–16:30
Venue: Valia Room, Valia Hotel, Sukhumvit 24, Bangkok, Thailand
Program
07:45–08:30 | Registration and Welcome Breakfast
08:30–08:35 | Opening remarks
Marc Uzan — Executive Director, Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee
SECTION I. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
08:35–9:20 | Session 1 — What is Driving the Global Economy in 2026 and Beyond?
Bambang Brodjonegoro — Dean and CEO, Asian Development Bank Institute
9:20–9:50 | Session 2 — In Conversation with Klaas Knot
Klaas Knot, Former Chair, Financial Stability Board; Former President, De Nederlandsche Bank; Distinguished Visiting Fellow, PIIE
Arend Kapteyn, Global Chief Economist, UBS (Chair)
9:55–10:35 | Session 3 — Fireside: In Conversation with Michelle Bowman
Michelle W. Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision, Federal Reserve; Chair, FSB Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation
Jonathan Pingle, US Chief Economist, UBS (Chair)
10:25–10:35 | Coffee Break
10:35–11:40 | Session 4 — Rethinking Monetary Policy for a Shock-Prone World
Kristin Forbes, Professor of Economics, MIT
Martin Kocher, Governor, Austrian National Bank
Gediminas Šimkus, Chairman of the Board, Bank of Lithuania and Member, ECB Governing Council
Huw Pill, Chief Economist and Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England
Arend Kapteyn, Global Chief Economist, UBS (Chair)
SECTION II. MONEY & MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
11:40–12:30 | Session 5- Digital Money, Stablecoins and Monetary Sovereignty
Li Kai, Chair Professor of Finance, PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University
Dominik Weh, Partner, Oliver Wyman (Chair)
12:30-13:30 | Lunch
SECTION III. EMERGING MARKETS
13:30–14:30 | Session 6 — Emerging Asia and LatAm: Preserving autonomy and resilience amid global fragmentation
Poonam Gupta — Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Massimiliano Castelli — Head, Global Sovereign Markets Strategy and Advice, UBS Asset Management (Chair)
14:30–15:20 | Session 6 — China and the Global Economy: Is China Reflating?
Haibin Zhu, Executive Director, Hong Kong Monetary Authority
Steven Barrett, Professor of Economics, HKU
Tao Wang, Senior Advisor, UBS (Chair)
15:20–15:35 | Coffee break
SECTION IV. CLOSING DEBATE
15:35–16:30 | Session 8 — The Global Imbalances Controversy: Where Do You Stand?
Helène Rey, Economic Advisor, BIS
Michael Pettis, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for international Peace
Martin Wolf, Economics Editor, The Financial Times
Brad Setser, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Chair: Shahin Vallee, Senior Fellow, German Council on Foreign Relations
Note: The agenda and speaker participation are subject to change.
More Session Details
Overview and Concept
The IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings return to Bangkok for the first time since 1991, a year that marked the apparent triumph of convergence, the expansion of global trade, and the beginning of Asia’s extraordinary economic transformation. Thirty-five years later, the world that gathered in Bangkok in 1991 is barely recognizable. The assumptions that markets would converge, institutions would strengthen, and growth would be shared have been tested by the global financial crisis, the pandemic, and a new wave of geopolitical fragmentation that challenges the foundations of the multilateral order.
Against this backdrop, the Global Macro programme steps back from daily data and market noise to examine the monetary and financial order now taking shape. It brings together central bankers, economists, policy leaders, and market experts to consider the forces shaping global growth, the rethinking of monetary policy in a shock-prone world, and the consequences of fragmentation for financial stability and economic governance.
The programme also focuses on monetary sovereignty and emerging-market resilience. Discussions will address digital money and stablecoins, de-dollarisation, capital-flow and commodity volatility, China’s evolving economic model, and the renewed controversy over global imbalances. Across the day, participants will ask whether institutions designed for an integrated global economy can adapt to a more fragmented and contested international system.
Guiding Questions
- What is driving the global economy in 2026, and is the AI investment wave a genuine productivity shift?
- How is the U.S. Federal Reserve navigating heightened global uncertainty, and what will its policy and regulatory choices mean internationally?
- How should monetary-policy frameworks evolve in a world of more frequent supply shocks?
- What opportunities and risks do stablecoins and new cross-border settlement rails create, and how can economies preserve monetary sovereignty?
- How can emerging economies in Asia and Latin America defend policy autonomy and financial resilience amid fragmentation, high debt, and volatile capital flows?
- Are current developments pointing toward meaningful de-dollarisation?
- How are China’s domestic-demand, monetary, fiscal, trade, and investment dynamics changing, and what do they imply for global growth?
- How should policymakers understand and respond to renewed global imbalances?