Under the motto "New Generation Finance: The Landscape is Changing - Are You?", the Campus for Finance - WHU New Year's Conference took place on January 16 and 17, 2019 at the Vallendar Stadthalle and the Vallendar Campus of WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management. International speakers and financial experts exchanged views with business representatives and students in lectures, panel discussions, and workshops on the transforming world of finance.
On the occasion of the Brexit negotiations, BeyondGlobal founder Sandra Navidi, BlackRock Managing Director Harald Klug and Dr. Robert Kilian, Managing Director of N26, discussed the challenges facing the European banking sector as a result of a possible loss of London as a financial center. Harald Klug estimates London's economic role to be such that its expertise and infrastructure will enable it to remain a financial center even after Brexit. Financial expert Sandra Navidi positioned herself as an optimist: "Europe will survive the alignment process if it acts as a unity."
In his speech, Dr. Johannes Teyssen, Managing Director of the energy group E.ON SE, pointed out to the audience what it means to be a good manager in the changing financial landscape. Dr. Jan Kemper, WHU alumnus and CFO at ProSiebenSat1 Media SE, also argued that it was crucial that financial institutions also change in the wake of global trends such as digitization and big data.
In another panel discussion, Professor Dr. Philipp Sandner, head of the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center of the Frankfurt School of Finance, among others, dealt with the key question of whether new technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain would replace traditional financial institutions. Professor Sandner compared the development of blockchain technology with that of the smartphone ten years ago: at that time, it was used only occasionally, but today it is impossible to imagine life without it. Sandner sees a similar situation for blockchain technology, which redefines the financial landscape due to its advantages of lower transfer costs and shorter processes over traditional physical banks.
Campus for Finance is a student initiative of WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management and was founded in 1999 in cooperation with the Endowed Chair of Finance. True to the motto "Uniting the World of Finance," Campus for Finance organizes two annual financial congresses: the WHU New Year's Conference and the WHU Private Equity Conference.