On the 28th of June, Mary Pieterse-Bloem, Professor of Financial Markets at Erasmus School of Economics and Global Head Fixed income in the Global Investment Center of the Private Bank of ABN AMRO, held her inaugural speech about the changing landscape of the financial markets. During her speech, she spoke about four trends in the financial market, that in particular have caught her interest.
In her speech, Professor Mary Pieterse-Bloem says that the size of the financial markets has become too large to control. The financial market, where financial demand and supply come together, is nowadays even bigger than the real economy. This is a development that Professor Pieterse-Bloem finds both admiring and scaring: She admires the creativity of financial professionals, but at the same time she is scared of the risks when it all goes wrong. That happened once already, in 2008, so it is possible that it would happen again. Moreover, we still haven't fully recovered from the crisis of 2008. At the same time, Professor Mary Pieterse-Bloem concludes that financial markets are everything but homogeneous: it consists of a diverse set of products, regions and rules. It is a large patchwork of sub-market which are all directly or indirectly connected with each other. Of all these sub-markets, Professor Pieterse-Bloem finds the bond market the most interesting and, after many years, she still enjoys working in this market to the fullest.