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Michael O’Sullivan

Former CIO Credit Suisse

AI, Economics, ESG, Fintech,Finance, Globalization, Green Energy,
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Michael O’Sullivan is an economic and geopolitical speaker.  He has twenty years’ experience in global financial markets, most recently as Chief Investment Officer of Credit Suisse, where he worked for twelve years. He now advises a number of asset management and fintech companies.

As a senior contributor at Forbes he writes about political, technological, and economic aspects of post-globalization. His work covers topics such as debt, democracy, and new technologies like quantum computing. He also analyzes the economic and financial world outside the U.S. for a U.S. audience.

A senior adviser at WestExec and a trustee of the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation, he brings extensive experience across global policy and governance.

Author of The Levelling (PublicAffairs), which explores the future of politics, economics, finance, and geopolitics in the post-globalization era, his recent work includes co-authoring L’Accord du Peuple (Calmann-Levy) and producing the BBC Radio 4 documentary Waking up to World Debt, along with several podcasts on the subject.

Previously a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the New Economy and a Forbes contributor, he has spoken at the 2020 TED Talk conference and at TEDx Stormont on restoring democracy.

Michael has contributed to journals like Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal in addition to being a regular guest on CNN, BBC, CNBC and Bloomberg.

He studied in Cork and received MPhil and DPhil degrees at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught finance and economics at Oxford University and Princeton University.

TOPICS, THEMES & TALKS

The End of Globalization — What Comes Next

How economies, trade, and politics are shifting into a new multipolar era. Mike is the author of The Levelling and has nearly 3mn views of his 2020 TED Talk The end of globalization and beginning of something new.

The Emerging Economic Zone of the Middle East

The Fourth Pole  will Donald Trump change the middle-east.
Asia Nikkei Review – working with the gulf states India can build a new centre of power.

 

Levelling Economies: Addressing Inequality in the Post‑Global Order
What rising inequality means for stability, democracy, and investment.

Markets & Power: How Geopolitics Shapes Financial Risk and Opportunity

How shifts in global power (China, India, regional blocs) are altering market assumptions. Forbes columns.
Will Uncertainty Derail Investment 

World Debt: Risk, Resilience, and the Next Financial Crisis

What heavily indebted economies should brace for, and what we can do.
Mike’s BBC documentary  and his forthcomin book ‘Age of Debt’. 

Restoring Credibility in Democracy

How democracies can renew trust, handle social media influence, and strengthen institutions. TEDx Talk in Stormont.
Note also Mike is the author of a book on French democracy –

Surviving the AI Bubble: Tech, Hype, & Reality

Separating speculation from sustainable innovation; what AI means for economies and jobs.
Forbes – The Stock Market is in an AI Bubble.

European Resilience: Can the EU Lead in a Fractured World?

What it needs to do to respond to immigration, geopolitical tension, climate policy, etc.

The New Institutional Landscape: Beyond WTO, IMF & Old Global Rules

What new multilateral and regional institutions are emerging, and how companies/nations should adapt.

Private Equity and Venture –

Mike is an advisor to Moonfare and an active investor in deep tech and fintech. He founded two fintech start-ups.

Credible Finance: Reimagining Markets in Unstable Times

Inflation, interest rates, risk cycles — how people and institutions can prepare.

Small Advanced Economies: Models for Growth in the Levelling Era

Lessons from smaller nations; how they punch above their weight in innovation, governance, and adaptability. Mike is the author of concepts like the ‘Micro Power’  The rise of the small states Forbes and has advised a number of small, advanced economy governments. 

A brilliant analysis of the transition in world economics, finance, and power as the era of globalization ends and gives way to new power centers and institutions.

The world is at a turning point similar to the fall of communism. Then, many focused on the collapse itself, and failed to see that a bigger trend, globalization, was about to take hold. The benefits of globalization–through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade–have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world’s economies.
These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O’Sullivan calls “the levelling”–a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What’s next is a levelling-out of wealth between poor and rich countries, of power between nations and regions, of political accountability from elites to the people, and of institutional power away from central banks and defunct twentieth-century institutions such as the WTO and the IMF.
O’Sullivan then moves to ways we can develop new, pragmatic solutions to such critical problems as political discontent, stunted economic growth, the productive functioning of finance, and political-economic structures that serve broader needs.
The Levelling comes at a crucial time in the rise and fall of nations. It has special importance for the US as its place in the world undergoes radical change–the ebbing of influence, profound questions over its economic model, societal decay, and the turmoil of public life.

 

 

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Michael O’Sullivan