FinanceMalta’s sixth annual conference on April 26, themed Competing in Global Markets: The New Normal, will have Bloomberg economist David Powell as keynote speaker. Mr Powell will be addressing the conference for the first time and heads an impressive cast of international speakers.

FinanceMalta is the public-private partnership set up to promote Malta’s international financial services sector.

Mr Powell is an economist at Bloomberg LP in London, where he focuses on euro area economics and currencies. Prior to joining Bloomberg, he worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a currency strategist. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Mr Powell maintains: “It’s not just the US economy that is throttling growth back to stall speed but the global economy as a whole. One of the most powerful big picture concepts that has taken place over the last decade is globalisation, the inter-connectedness of the world economy, and right now it’s skating on thin ice. While the US may have been the fire starter with its subprime crisis back in 2007-2008, this time it may be the euro crisis that pulls the global economy underwater.”

In addition to Mr Powell, Fabio Recine, principal of financial stability at the European Central Bank, will give a keynote address on a subject that has transfixed the markets in recent weeks, the financial crisis, including what has happened in Cyprus.

Mr Recine will examine the main elements of reform and describe the main tasks of the ECB in the context of the newly-established Single Supervisory Mechanism, the mechanism through which the ECB will assume ultimate responsibility for specific supervisory tasks related to the financial stability of all euro area banks.

The conference will be closed by Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small Business Chris Cardona. For more information, visit www.financemalta.org.