Inaugural Speech for DBA program at University of Colombo. A Survey and View of the Field from the standpoint of a Financial Capital and Economic Society specialist. It is a Developing Countries Viewpoint.

1. Inauguration Speech By Dr Darin Gunesekera
The Vice-Chancellor, Deans, Professors, Lecturers, Staff, Students and
Guests, I thank you and especially the Team for the Doctoral Program in Business
Administration for kindly inviting me to give this talk. It is a great honor and privilege.
And I appreciate your kind regards.
I am myself an Economist. I first walked on a Stock Exchange Floor well over
50 years ago, in the third oldest stock exchange floor in Asia, The Manila Exchange.
Since then I have had a deep interest in this subject, even as my intellect, as normal
for Economists, filled with Social thoughts. This subject of Capital Markets is an area
common to Economics and Business Administration and certainly central in the
current age where Finance takes center stage.
I recall in 1982 - 1985, I was encouraging the idea of only professionals doing
the business of stocks and shares, and training the same for the trading floor of the
Colombo Stock Exchange, which I ran. Then, Prof Gabriel, the Cancer Surgeon of
high repute at the time, accosted me at a social event. He questioned me about the
idea of a professional in and of a business. As an established surgeon, he had many
years experience of dealing in shares and property. He told me that he could not
believe these businesses could be run by anyone other than rogues, if not villains. I
could not deny what to him was plain experience. But I maintained my stand for
training and what is a step higher, education, in Financial Business.
Economics is clearly Higher Education. Professors Rashid Salim and Joel
Mokyr, as I recall, established beyond doubt that classical Economics was the
product of the ethics and culture of the English Vicarage. It had a priestly ethos
within that culture. This placed it in English Higher Education.
The application of Economics was at a time a Philosophy and later a kind of
Planning. But these ideas have been popularly overcome in Capitalist and Market
economies with the Management of Business becoming the actual site of
Economics. Whatever the theorizing, and State action, this subject has to end up as
a form of administration or management of a Business. So now this is the Higher
Education subject with practitioners in the actual world of reality.
This is my considered view after over 50 years of in depth study and practical
application of Economics in many fields from Capital markets and Investment
through Urban real estate to Social Entrepreneurship. Even when Academics make a
special field as Regulation, it must be understood that Business and its Management
comes first and Regulation can come only in its context. For Regulation without
Business is nonsensical, though examples abound in Developing Countries receiving
international assistance.
A Doctoral Degree program is an academic program. A Bachelors or Masters
program may be represented as a practical course. But at the Doctoral level it has to
be Academic.
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2. This does not mean without practical considerations. On the contrary the
DBA program is very much practical, but it must have a higher perspective. As all of
us are witnessing such a Program being born today, let me try to give some
perspectives which may be of interest to students and others involved in this venture.
A. ECONOMIC LIFE
Capital Markets
Capital Markets are today part of a spectrum of financial or securities markets
covering monetary to stocks and shares investments. They are presented in the
Developed world as Regulated Markets.
In the emergent markets they are represented generally as investment
markets. When I began to make the stocks or shares marketplace a reality in Sri
Lanka, I used to say that this was how the fruits of economic growth, which clearly
accrue to business, are shared with the people of the nation. It used to be a point for
populism.
However it is clear today that what this business means in practice is creating
a safe and clear route for US Pension Funds to invest in an emerging market. Then if
new shares are sold to a California Teachers’ Pension Fund, who gets the fruits of
economic growth ? And how does that country get ahead when new wealth created
is handed over to foreigners ?
As is always the case. This arises from the details of the case. We are in a
world where a new world order is being forged. Old Economic Historians, unfazed
by current affairs, used to maintain that the economic system of the turn of the
twentieth century would be seen again at the turn of the Twenty First. It may be. For
in the new world of finance, the nature of the market itself has changed.
When I began asking companies listed in the stock brokers association in
Nairobi Kenya to release annual reports and information to shareholders, I faced stiff
resistance. They had sold some shares to others. To give them information too
seemed to be excessive. I had a battle where wit more than reason would prevail.
However today, I wonder how many investors in the Kenyan stock markets
read all those annual reports. These are often condensed into data CDs. I cannot
believe there are assiduous investors studying these. Again it is because the world
of the market has changed.
As an Economist, how does one analyze this situation. I think it is by asking
the questions, who owns all of this, especially the engine ? And who is the biggest
player ?
The answer is surprisingly easy. It is the fast trade platforms. BATS of
Kansas as a group was, in 2016, the largest or second largest trader in the world. It
is now owned by the Chicago Board (CBOE). Hardly anyone outside the business
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3. knew this. There are now several such organizations. At the height of the fast
transactions market, the average time a share was held was 11 seconds.
As an Economist and Administrator or Manager of a certain type of business,
Capital Finance, I went to the man at the bottom of it. He and his main rival were
Kansas kids. The more vocal person spoke to me. “Doctor, this is not Economics you
know anything about.” But I persevered. It turned out that this great bit of Economics
had been told to him by a lecturer at the Kansas City Central College, I think evening
school. This was not MIT technology. But actually I understood what the lecturer
had done.
In Economics as it is taught today in the big classes for first year students and
the adult students, what used to be a fascinating run of lectures is replaced by just
that graph of demand and supply. When I was a student, the lecturer delivered a lot
of arguments on markets. These culminated in the lecturer, like some magic
schoolmaster, with a flourish, drawing the supply and demand curves and their heart,
their intersection, the market price.
But we know this is an illusion. Such a thing, that intersection, can never
happen. The solution logic used to be called the Walras equilibrium, in honor of that
Swiss Professor. His peculiar pedantry was the introduction of seamless re-
contracting in the process of getting to price.
This is what the Kansas kids used to take over the world of trading. Walras
was a man in his study. For these kids it was all real. CBOE bought BATS off them
for 3.2B$ in real money.
There are many pedantries that have unravelled in recent years. By and large
they are due to Economics and business theory being born of speculative discussion
rather than mathematical rigor. So they constitute what may be classified as
mathematical entities without precise description, somewhat Singularities. Not to be
confused with the von Neumann quote of Singularity being when AI reaches Human
Intelligence.
The result today is FINTECH. It is where algorithmic machine or electronic
operations constitute financial operations. That is the MBA part.
For the DBA, there is more.
We cannot after all say that the regulated market is where a poor widow with
her legacy of her husband’s hard earned company shares is at the mercy of nano
second trading automata.
In the British influenced countries, we now have the argument that if a person
buys shares it is surely to sell. So why not do it both at once ? So the share of that
solid company with hard copy and CD copy thick accounts of balances and profit and
loss is replaced by a Betting slip. In fact these specialists form a lot of the retail
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4. market today. Retail Singapore Stock Exchange is today devastated by it, with large
numbers of under-employed sales staff. This is apart from the China v USA situation
there that has also led to massive retrenchment.
Now, we must make sense of this. And there is only one way. It is to think
from a standpoint. I suggest converting the apparent Economics conundrum into a
Business Management problem. The standpoint is necessarily national or of a group
Incorporate. That is the base. You can see this in many countries and amongst
many communities. Then it is feasible to come to some firm operating principles and
strategies from that viewpoint base.
I offer a Principle, called P1, P2, P3 below. It is a Principle for strategy or
Policy formulation and implementation. Formulation of the problem is half the matter
and requires considerable expertise. Similarly Implementation is not automatic. This
also requires expertise.
The scope of the Principle is Capital Markets, Urban Development,
Industrialization, Investment development, and all other economic sectors from the
primary as Agriculture to the Services as Health and Infrastructure.
The Principle is that ( P 1) the Economics of the matter under consideration
be studied but realized to be an understanding of a Victorian Culture. It reveals the
red in the claw, law of the jungle type of nature of the situation. However this must
be realized to be a very limited view. The reason is that the analysis is based on
inapplicable lines of reasoning. Most of Economics cannot be directly applied. Even
simple items as trade is good, is a back-hander. If a sole rice grower trades rice with
a sole clothes maker, we all know this is suicide for the rice growers in the modern
world. The classical trade argument abstracts from Income effects, regulated
economics, and third countries. This makes that analysis, as prescription, worthless.
But we start with it.
So we must ( P 2) follow up with business management. That is study with a
view to finding a practical formulation and a practical implementation within our
terms. I emphasize the phrase “Our Terms” as it simply never works otherwise.
Whether one runs a business on a small island as in the Seychelles or
Mauritius or in Sri Lanka or in a big 100 million population economy as the
Philippines or an American State as Florida, there is a clear and different solution in
each case. Even if it is just a coconut or citrus fruits business in each of these
places.
And the most stunning result of the past half century ( P 3) is that the localized
method is best. There is no Law of increasing returns to scale, even for engineering
single machine factories, if the world is not simultaneously frozen. For the normal
world, especially of today, the natural winner is always somewhat low scale. Or you
have to internalize the economic process in a big organization. But then, you
thereby eliminate the sine qua non of Classical Economics, the Market.
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5. For the technical it may be termed that empirical work has to yield to the fact
that the stochastic processes underlying our data, across even a century, do
undergo change. Or perhaps, Data Science has outperformed Statistics as the
methodology of Economics.
Urban and Real Estate and Housing studies
We can now deal quite rapidly with the major problems that we face and
which would constitute good research areas for us all.
For quite some time now, our urban areas have had a shortage of housing.
Annually this shortage grows as the increase in stock is much smaller than the
growth in need. Besides this shortage of homes, there is an even greater shortage of
power supply, transport and infrastructure.
Governments go about developing these fields through their
compartmentalized administrative structures. We as business analysts need not
have these restrictions. In fact it is the duty of academics to view the picture as large
as possible. Business management flows from such a picture.
Housing and urban structures should grow under the terms of the market. I
studied the Singapore situation about 20 years ago. At that time, even, the domestic
construction capacity was in the region of 160,000 units per year. However annual
new units requirement for migrants and new families was below 100,000. Did they
have excess capacity ? No, for there is always a replacement demand. All structures
must be inspected regularly and then go through a process of condemnation and re-
construction. This was true in the heyday of re-inforced concrete and even more so
in these days of pre-stressed concrete. The Empire State building, made of RIC, is
getting ready for rebuild time. London’s 60’s Council apartment buildings with pre-
stressed concrete began their re-construction in the 90’s.
We have not had a researched condemnation-reconstruction history. So this
is an immediate area for business management research. Current trends for
prefabricated, pre-stressed and hollow pre-stressed concrete also need study with
maintenance and re-construction in mind.
Combined with this is the matter of best methodologies of development and
finance. Again, the importance of business administration students having at hand
largest macro analysis of micro features is important.
I have mentioned the basic matter of accrual of wealth. There are other
features such as consequences of ownership. At present a building has to have
ground as well as articulation for ownership. Practically, a sequence of covenants will
fill out legal ownership. As we move from the strictly urban housing area to
agriculture and industry the problems of legal easements rise to become crucial.
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6. There are many areas of urban and housing development, associated
infrastructure and human economic development which need to be studied.
Personally I believe that the time has long come for the removal of capital and
banking markets exclusivity, or specialization by particular institutions. We need to
replace these financing recognitions by Investment Trust or Land Trust or
Community Trust based public yet local schemes.
The Emergence /Suppression of Investment Asset Classes
Globally there have been serious changes in Asset classes in Banking,
Capital Markets and Investment areas. Western nations have seen the rise of
Student Loan assets as a Banking class that is a major sector. We have seen the
rise of composite assets or parcels as investment asset classes.
In developing countries there is a rising migrant labor loans asset class. It is
clear from bad loan portfolio analysis and an analysis of companies that fail, that
investment asset class labels in emerging countries are often aspirational rather than
objective.
Singaporean studies show that many countries have asset class loans rising
for their migrant labor. Even when countries of labor origin change, the asset class
just grows. It is a liked investment as being international contracts, the legal status is
superior for the loan and with less variability for the loan taker.
In both these high growth cases, student loans and migrant labor loans, the
situation is immoral. The loans are taken by persons who suffer a false picture of
their futures. Overall, the capacity to repay is over stated. Developing countries
create a slave class of their own people through their migrant labor services loans.
This is not an investment asset class neutral in ethics or social values.
Even in highly formal capital markets, asset classes have undergone varied
changes, all in the direction of greater security of investor returns. Even where
capital for young or new business is concerned, innovation has not been for greater
riskiness but the reverse. In fact, even in the case of simple mortgage of an asset
for capital for the business, we have seen that instead of mortgage there is now
encouragement for schemes where there is a change of ownership to the capital
provider with sell back out of income earned by the active manager.
The potential for money and finance schemes will grow with the fade out of
Central Banks as controllers or persons running the monetary sector . The theory is
to get endogenous status to what have been Central Bank controlled variables. .
Right now even the prime points of arbitration in the monetary system, money supply
and price levels, have been moved by theory to endogenous variables status.
Endogenous means determined by the working of the system and not by a controller.
Similarly the SEC or Capital Markets Authorities have been brought down
from promoters to be formal centers, taking their cue from etiquette rather than
actual Money movers or arbiters of money movements.
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7. Business research is needed in these financial fields. In particular, simple
questions need to be asked about all financial markets. Who owns the market or the
engine of it ? Who benefits financially ? In growth ? To whom does wealth growth
accrue ? And especially can the market be made more a market as we normally
know it. That is, give participants the normal services expected by participants as fair
opportunities; Prices arrived at fairly; non-dominance by one or a group of
companies.
I believe that every financial market can be solved for maximum benefit for
developing country participants rigorously and case by case. It must be under- taken
at the local beneficiary level. It is the principle of Investment Trusts. Urban
development should not be a case of Public Money being channelled to private
pockets but of entirely private operations supporting public structures as well. The
public interest then can support by legal measures what we are now forced to
introduce as covenants.
International Investment
It should be clear at this stage that there is a lot that can be studied and
researched in the international economy. The distinctions of classifications as trade
versus Capital and specialized treatment for services is a thing of the past. So also
the confinement of currency transactions. There is common understanding that what
matters are the payments systems used. Fintech is still at the boy-scout stage. Any
specialist in Monetary Economics or Business Financing will easily see that Financial
Technology has accomplished a lot but then lost a lot by trying to conform to what
the technicians understand as economics or business. The use of technology to
fundamentally change payments systems is yet in the future.
The current China v USA economic conflict has highlighted other concerns.
The two main sources of information are (1) Dinny MacMahon’s China’s Wall of Debt
work done at Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School and its enthusiastic
follow through by a phalanx of mainly American scholars and institutions and (2)
Johns Hopkins SAIS China Africa Research Initiative.
Both research initiatives gathered masses of information. The Johns Hopkins
CARI especially is data heavy as it gathered business information from Chinese
sources, public documents that need to be filed, as well as international documents.
It has highlighted the very heavy returns Chinese corporations gain from overseas
activities; such as a 60% return in the first year in African investments. They have
shown glaring discrepancies between Chinese home accounts and accounts
submitted to the developing countries. It is a source of humor and revelation in
Africa itself. At the same time, the spotlight on tax havens have shown the equally
high returns to Western MNCs internationally, especially Corporations manufacturing
in China gaining apparently over 60% profit .
They have revealed very heavy borrowing underlying the Chinese
international infrastructure ventures. Internal to China is the existence of loan
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8. facilities not allowed in other developed countries. By and large China has
acknowledged these and they have, with Multi-Lateral advice, engaged in serious
internal change. Local Governments and Chinese Corporations have been changed
considerably. The LIC or local government investment corporations are being
reduced in financial functions. Chinese practices as small units offering on line loans
and systems of investment, generally known as shadow banking and dark pools, are
also being curtailed.
As developing countries have high economic relations with the West and
China, this international arena needs to be studied by business students. This is
possibly a priority over other international zones as India, Mid-East and ASEAN. A
reason is that the economic development model of China today is the model used on
them by the US and now being globalized by the Western nations. That is, that
Labor is underpaid and kept in poor social circumstances and subject to
environmental pollution during the period of growth and capital accumulation in
industries. Thereafter mass entertainment and consumption is brought in.
Construction of efficient but weak esthetics homes and cities was a Chinese method,
previously common in the US. The rivals China and the US agree on this
prescription. And also in the associated aspects as free trade zones, investment
zones, foreign capital access, restricted currencies as a means of control and so on.
The increasing indebtedness and increasing fiscal restrictions of developing
countries mean that business management has to develop distinct models of
management for these conditions.
My appeal is that actual students and researchers look to nearby Africa as a
place for collaborative analysis and research as conditions are globally equivalent.
B. ROMANCE
Social Entrepreneurship
A new field which has emerged in the world of business studies is that of
Social Entrepreneurship. I have termed it Romance as it is not a hard subject in
definitions and without the mathematical rigor characteristic of modern Economics
and Management Systems studies.
The field of action took off under the leadership of Bill Drayton, now best
known as the Founder of the base organization in this field, Ashoka: Social
Innovators for the Public. Drayton was one of the youngest of the Harvard men
brought into US Administration by President Kennedy. He set up the Environment
Protection Agency. Personally he had been to India and been inspired by Vinoba
Bhave. As an American upper middle class person trained in Management and Law,
he could not get over the fact that this simple man walked across India and at each
place he spoke people would get up and hand over land titles to this movement.
In later decades, in Washington, firstly the World Bank and related Agencies
were seen as false in their values and corrupt. Later upper middle class America in
Washington saw the NGOs were no better. There was a search for another answer
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9. to persistent world poverty. Inside Washington and in the Establishment they found
Drayton and Social Entrepreneurship. The movement gained more momentum
when Mary Gordon joined it with her use of Empathy Theory.
Drayton presented Social Entrepreneurship as a Schumpeterian force which
was the other side of the coin of Business Development which he argued had to gain
dominance as we moved further into the Sociology of the post industrial world. His
arguments gathered a lot of force and momentum in the USA business world and
especially the then upcoming E-Business tycoons, whose own experience of
business had a different start and trajectory to the old norms of business.
At present, social entrepreneurship is, in the sense used in literary criticism, a
Romantic movement. It appeals to an underlying philosophic vein in the very culture
that brought forth Economics Theory. However as an academic discipline it is still an
exuberant growth in search of strict bases. For that reason it is difficult to judge an
item of social enterprise, except in the sense of perhaps in practice clearly solving a
social problem.
For this very reason it is a good field for development. But a Researcher
should be aware of the history and evolution of this line of action. It is usual in actual
research to find that the specific social entrepreneurship is also a part of a more
academic discipline and capable of a different rigorous presentation. For instance
housing of low income persons may be social entrepreneurship. But it is also good
urban planning. Either way it is a subject area for today’s business management.
Many persons have seen the poverty and suffering of traditional crafts
persons and traditional agriculturists in our countries and devised Social
Entrepreneurship business management for these areas. This is the Romance of
business. But it is important that these enterprises do not exceed the sociology of the
place. Many words in common use have meanings in Asia or Africa that differ to
their US or European meaning. “Community” , “Tradition” and “Slum” are some of
these. These in our countries hide social oppression and under-waters of politics
often. They are not easy tools for economic advancement. In inflation and
unemployment riddled economies, the first clear need is that the emaciated people
need to eat. Living life precedes maximizing economic work, though it clearly is part
of it.
C. UNIVERSAL
Homo Deus v Deus or v People
South Asian students and young lecturers in Economics going to a Western
University usually are puzzled by the apparent absence of Marx in the Economics
Departments. When I was a student, even in Universities which had no Left leaning
academic work apparent, there would be what used to be called “Marxian
Economics” courses. There was also then, “Comparative Economics” and
“Planning” as a subject field in Economics and also Management where essentially
the features of the Soviet world were studied. The merging of Business and
Economic Planning was then a serious academic enterprise.
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10. The world has changed. Marx now lingers in “Conflict Studies” as a pioneer
and within the EU Universities within Critical Theory. The far more obvious place for
such studies would be Inequality. However this growing feature of economic reality
is still treated as a something that has slipped in by accident.
The serious field of highest order or Universal Thinking discourse has instead
shifted to an area now highly popularized by Y N Harari’s books centering on Homo
Deus. The subject is self evident, it is the assumption by Man, through powerful
exponential growth technology, of the powers usually ascribed to God.
The reason for considering this seriously in our field is because it brings
together many strands in especially Finance and both Management and Economics.
The story begins with the Philosophies of Science that drove the technology
which found expression in NASA of USA. The AI and IT branches of NASA, now
held to have a global social impact area, have come together in what is called
Singularity University. It is located in NASA in the Silicon Valley area at a location
known to fans of aerospace and the US helium balloon warships, Moffet Field. The
key academic leaders, Kurtzweiler and Diamandis, have surfaced a globalization in
academic fields of Tech Science, the heart of which is AI, asserted to rapidly
overtake human intelligence. So the normal full global development academic range
is displayed in a NASA type classification. Even I, as Capital Markets for the
Marginalized, researching Kibera, the world’s worst slum according to experts, gave
a speech there. I asked Kurtzweiler’s student where I stand in this proud
classification of the worlds of learning into 12 areas. I was shown the Board
“Prosperity”, I ventured ‘No, I’d say Poverty’. The others watching me from behind
beamed. And I beamed back. For a Maths Schoolboy, I had met my brothers and
sisters. Here, Poverty is just negative Prosperity.
I decided that I was going to like FINTECH, which is what the current state of
Capital and Money “Markets” is called by my new friends.
Yet these are not jokes. And Harari, in his widely publicized books, all of
which say the same thing, has put in writing the theory of the final conquest of
Economics and Scientific Business in a form compatible with past great books of
economics and society. Somewhat like Victorian historians reconstructing English
history and culture to fit in with Victorian achievements, Harari shows the inexorable
rise of Man to a God through Technology.
In particular, it makes the whole world solvable by Business Management and
Economic analysis using the power of exponentially rising levels of computation. No
theoretical revolution is needed, simply computation power and AI programming, to
lead to the best of all worlds materially for all Mankind. With ideal man as ideal god,
neither Deus nor People are needed.
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11. I have myself taken a reverse view, replete with a reverse mathematical
ground. But that is still in formulation stage.
The thought leaders at Singularity University and associated universities have
taken increasingly bold predictions. Fundamental is that AI will reach the same level
or supersede human intelligence by 2045. Kurtzweiler himself has declared he
would become immortal himself by transforming into a machine by then. And that
this is a revolution in the world which shall enter by disruptive destruction of the past.
Central in the immediate attack of disruption are two prongs of the future. These are
Finance, or FINTECH change, and the data science revision of law and regulation
with respect urban living, or SMART change.
Of importance to us is the increasing global notion emanating from this
powerfully financed source that there is a single path that our economic and
business realities and methods shall have to conform to. And the pathway is clear. It
is through my subject area, money, capital and finance. And the subject area that I
ran for cover to: Urban and Housing. The world is being set on a course of
increasing Power, of increasing combinations of lateral conformity of small
institutions and AI neural centers. And the Nano or individual even when in abject
poverty is to be inside this. Nano means no hiding place.
What this means for the business administration student is that there can be
no left out areas. The system has to be complete. It is Imperial in that sense.
When planning a road, it has been a practice to put in road sensors to track
traffic and have a student conducted questionnaire of persons currently using the
road. The new planning method is different and called getting SMART. That means
everyone and all in the city must be brought into the decision making. It is a different
kind of exercise.
This is reality. The Congo, DCR, covers most of the Congo basin. It is a
difficult country for business and other managers. For Eastern Congo projects,
persons who are essential stay the night across the border in Rwanda or Uganda,
and come in to work by the day. They say, usually, that the Law governing is that
there is no Law.
Yet in South Kivu, a decentralized municipality at the edge of the Congo
basin, an American AI expert has installed a working Smart system for municipal
services and payments. It is reported on very positively.
You can decide for yourself if this Homo Deus is firstly what it says it is and
secondly if it is desirable. I think it militates against Deus or for that matter “People”.
You through your studies and research can actually decide which or what is
the valid thesis.
_______________________—— Dr Darin Gunesekera, August 9, 2019.
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12. ADDENDUM
Getting new forms of Capital Markets started
Social entrepreneurship in Varanasi, India. (2004-09). I travelled to Varanasi
to explore a housing scheme with a social organization PVCHR, led by Dr Lenin
Raghuvanshi. In a 3 day visit ending in a brief report, I suggested that instead of the
suburbs, they look at the center where slum dwellers had starvation. I was given a
polite press conference WITH A SMILE AT STARVATION..
After some months one person walked into the area. I received frantic calls. I
told him that for starvation, the answer is immediate food and a Registered Nurse.
That started a campaign which ended up national. I also discovered that
Varanasi besides being holy, was the center of a silk weaving industry. That was the
source of starvation and it needed a Stock Exchange, not a Registered Nurse.
People agreed. Varanasi weavers ended a mass meeting in the Gandhi
Complex with a street march. Every marcher paid for his place, Rs1/=, and looked
after her/himself. The collection enabled a Banner signed by as many as possible
which was presented to Authorities. The Government eventually agreed with my Plan
emerging in a debated and much changed form as a President’s Plan to End Slums
in Five Years, for all India. Trillions were spent. Starvation in our area ended.
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13.
And in Africa in Kibera.
Formal discussions are needed with Authorities. Facts are up to Expert.
Kibera - All slums have washing up
Kigali - All low income countries have
impressive Conference Facilities.
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14. RESUME of Dr Darin Gunesekera
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Economics Yale University, USA
B.A. (1st class Hons) U of Victoria, BC, Canada
High School Royal College, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka
Honors
Bourse de Bourses Medal (200th Anniversary special medal) of Paris Stock
Exchange with Stock Exchanges World Federation (FIBV) 1994
UNHABITAT Global Best Practice in Affordable Housing (One of Five) 2009
TOYP Award of Sri Lanka JayCees (one of Ten outstanding young
persons)1983
Ashoka Innovators for the Public (Washington DC) Fellowship as first fellow in
social entrepreneurship from Sri Lanka
Many Fellowships, Awards and Prizes during University and School years and
fund awards as Social Entrepreneur. At Yale University, USA, he was a Fellow, then
an Instructor in Economics at the Graduate School and also Instructor at the Yale
Law School.
Darin Gunesekera’s first public project was as Secretary General setting up
the Colombo Stock Exchange and the Securities Council (SEC) while reporting to
H.E. The President of Sri Lanka’s executive office (President J R Jayewardene) as
Advisor. He also drafted the legislation and Rules and Regulations, under Cabinet
direction. He spoke extensively and wrote many articles to popularize the Stock
Exchange at the time. He conducted the stockbrokers’ course and graduated the
first certificate holders for purposes of licensing. In his work, the number of
stockbroker companies rose from six to twelve, market cap increased 23 times and
capital raised on the Exchange rose to be over two thirds that of India in the peak
year. This was in 1981-85.
He was also appointed a Commissioner of the Sri Lanka GCEC (now Board of
Investment). He presented the plans for several other projects in Sri Lanka,
including the enterprise part of the Janasaviya Program, a system of capital supply
to the poorest of the poor, before he left for foreign work. He was awarded a
JayCee’s TOYP Award for achievement as a Young Person for his work in setting up
the Colombo Stock Exchange.
Darin was well known in Kenya when he was Capital Markets Authority
Advisor. He simultaneously worked with the regulator, CMA, and the operational
body, the Nairobi Stock Exchange, to change to a modern set up and system. He
also drafted most of the new Rules and other legislation. He created a different type
of “SEC” Act which has found its way to other African countries. For 5 years he wrote
a weekly column in the business pages of the Nation newspaper, East Africa’s
largest. The Kenyan system increased several times to become the leading African
stock exchange. Share issue subscriptions in Kenya even exceeded numbers in
Nigeria, while being much more than in Sri Lanka. He started computation of a stock
market index which rose from about 200 to over 6500 during his time at the
Exchange. This success propelled Kenya to be the African standard bearer. At the
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15. inaugural meeting in Kenya he was Secretary of the African Stock Exchanges
Association. During this period he was one of those building up an African voice in
international fora of insurance, housing and capital markets.
Following this, he was Privatization Advisor to the Government of Uganda and
helped the Ministry to launch public auctions, a merchant bank based exchange and
move privatizations to the public route. This was considered a model by World Bank
at the time. Earlier, he worked briefly for the Bank of Tanzania to set up a Forex
auction system.
In 1994, he was awarded the "Bourse de Bourses" medal by the Paris Stock
Exchange during its 200th anniversary (recommended by FIBV, the World
Federation of Stock Exchanges, now WFE) for his innovative work in the subject
Darin Gunesekera originated a concept for sustainable Slum and Shanty
dweller re-housing using the Capital Market in 1998. The resultant project was
called REEL. He was Cabinet appointed advisor to the Ministry and then to its State
owned company, the Real Estate Exchange Ltd. He advised the project through the
completion of its first cycle of housing and land liberation by the end of 2000.
In the light of experience and work in several countries, this has been refined
to the S-REIT or Social Real Estate Investment Trust method. This program now
also includes the livelihoods of the Marginalized. His ideas have reached official
national acceptance in India, acceptance as a method of planned townships and
then as a method in the 2009 Indian "President's Plan to end slums in five years",
and the Philippines (acceptance by the Presidential Committee) as well as in Sri
Lanka. In Kenya it was accepted as a plan under the Ministry and supported by
Shelter Afrique,
Darin gained international acceptance for his concept through presentations
before the Greater London Assembly (Lord Rogers’ Urbanism Advisory body), and
later the national final Authorities in the Philippines, Kenya and Shelter Afrique. In
India, he presented the case before the Indian Planning Commission in connection
with a solution for the Varanasi Weavers. The generic form of the scheme has been
accepted for financing in the Indian President’s Plan for ending slums in five years.
Darin was recognized with a UNHABITAT Business Award as one of the Five
Best practices in the World in the field of Affordable Housing in July 2009 (on
recommendation by Nov 2008, World Urban Forum), through an independent Jury.
In March 2010 he spoke at the Business Plenary Roundtable of the World
Urban Forum (WUF - UNHABITAT) (5th) in Rio, Brazil as the only speaker
representing the global “South” nations other than BRIC and is a member of the
private sector committee in UNHABITAT.
He was made the first Fellow from Sri Lanka by Ashoka: Innovators for the
Public of Washington, DC, USA in 2003 (An organization recognizing about 2000
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16. persons). In 2006, his work as a social entrepreneur was also recognized by the
Skoll Foundation (USA).
Darin has been a long term Advisor under World Bank and USAID, and
Advisor under the Commonwealth Secretariat and the UN system. He has given
speeches and seminars widely under leading sponsors in the stock exchanges field
and the urban social housing field. He has written articles and been cited in leading
magazines and publications in his field. For several years his role was to give the
African view at Insurance, Shelter Afrique, Securities and Stock Exchanges
Conferences. He has been a keynote speaker at the Annual meetings of these and
now of organizations in the Housing field, Architects and related fields.
He was a speaker, the only developing country one, at China Social
Innovation Week, Beijing 1914 (May), where he explained the social REIT as a
model social entrepreneur project. This is the Annual event of Cinnovate, a State
organization for Social Entrepreneurs in China.
He was a Speaker at the East African Capital Markets Conference, Feby 2015
in Kigali Rwanda sponsored by IFC. The World Bank group holds African Capital
Markets Conferences from time to time. This one was for Eastern Africa with all
Africa participation. Darin spoke of REITs and the Social REIT. He highlighted the
need for social perspective in developing Capital Markets.
He was a Speaker at NASA, Moffett Field, California, (Singularity University
within Ames Research Center) which is NASA's Silicon Valley Center. He spoke of
the Social REIT, Affordable Housing and the use of an innovation, "The Internet of
Social Action (and Emotions)." (available on Slideshare.net) Annually NASA
sponsors this Program on Global Challenges where Challenges of a Global nature
susceptible to exponential growth solution are discussed. Within the greater field of
Poverty, Darin addressed the issue of Prosperity by dealing with the situation where
there is a global challenge of escalating poverty and how it could be addressed and
solved using existing tools. Darin presented his idea of a Social Action Sphere which
is separate and an internet of its own, separate from the commercial money internet
of things. June 2015.
On November 29, 2016; he spoke on the Social REIT and social investment
development which can be lead by Stock Exchanges at the 20th Annual Meetings/
Conference of the African Stock Exchanges Association held in Kigali, Rwanda. He
had been founding secretary of this Association (ASEA) and had given the speech
founding the Association 20 years previously.
He was Consultant hired by IFC (International Finance Corporation, the
financial markets arm of the World Bank Group) for studying the feasibility of his
Social REIT concept in Rwanda and East Africa.
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