The future of gold in the world of money

Pawel Kowalewski

Senior Adviser

Narodowy Bank Polski

Mr. Kowalewski holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Economics from the University of Gdansk. His dissertation was on “The euro’s impact on the international monetary system”. He has been working in central banks for almost two decades. Currently he is affiliated with Narodowy Bank Polski. Previously he worked for the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Austrian OeNB (in cooperation with the scientific institute, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.

Apart from the central banking community, Mr. Kowalewski also worked for the Ministry of Finance (where he was responsible for the management of the public debt), and in the academic world (University of Gdańsk and Vienna University of Economics and Business). In the 1990s he worked for the first private research institute, the Gdańsk Institute for Market Economics.

He is a native of Gdansk and Gdynia area in Poland, and speaks English, Spanish and German in addition to his native language.

Willem Middelkoop

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Commodity Discovery Fund

Willem Middelkoop (Geneva, August 21, 1962) is an entrepreneur and investor, who, earlier in his career, became well-known as a photojournalist, columnist and market commentator on TV. In 2008, he founded AmsterdamGold and the Commodity Discovery Fund. The former he sold to Value8 in 2011, after which he and two coinvestors became founding shareholders of the successful business accelerator Startup Bootcamp Amsterdam. Today, as founder and director, Middelkoop works full time for the Commodity Discovery Fund and travels the world as a speaker and commentator on monetary and geopolitical issues. He has written a series of successful books on these topics. Middelkoop is a member of the Advisory Council of the London-based monetary think-tank OMFIF.

John Nugée

Senior Adviser

OMFIF

John is an independent commentator and public speaker on financial, economic and political issues, with an extensive background in the official sector and over 30 years practical experience of training and capacity building in public sector finance and investment management.  He spent his career working in and with central banks, including spells as the Executive Director in charge of reserves management at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and as the Chief Manager of reserves management at the Bank of England. Latterly he was at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), where his responsibilities covered advising SSgA’s central bank, sovereign wealth fund and other official sector clients on investment matters, and consultation on general public policy issues.

He has also acted as a director of the European Investment Bank and European Investment Fund, an advisor to the European Commission’s Working Group of Technical Experts on Markets, an Associate Fellow of Chatham House in the International Economics directorate, a visiting lecturer at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, a senior lecturer at the Macro-Economic and Financial Management Institute of Africa (MEFMI) and a senior advisor to the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF).  Following his formal retirement he lectured in Politics and Economics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.  He is the author of a number of books, including Reflections on Global Finance (2013), The Wisdom of Markets (2020), and (with Gabriel Stein) Sailing Free – The saga of Kári the Icelander (2021).  He has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University, and is married to Vicky with three adult children.

Karsten Stroborn

Director General, Markets

Deutsche Bundesbank

Mark Sobel

Vice Chair and Chief Economist

OMFIF

Mark Sobel is Chief Economist and Vice Chair at OMFIF. Mark is a veteran US Treasury official, who was at the forefront of international financial diplomacy for two decades.

Mark, who represented the US on the International Monetary Fund executive board up to April 2018, has had a 40-year Treasury career with extensive around-the-world engagement.

He works with OMFIF in dealings with private and public sector organisations, speak regularly on international and US policy, and provide OMFIF members with insight and analysis.

Mark was Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for international monetary and financial policy between 2000 and early 2015. He helped lead Treasury preparations for G7 and G20 finance minister and central bank governor meetings, formulated US positions at the IMF, and coordinated Treasury and regulatory agencies’ work in the Financial Stability Board.

Mark founded the US/EU Financial Market Regulatory Dialogue and chaired an international group of private and official sovereign debt experts that developed enhanced collective action clauses for sovereign debt restructuring. He managed the $100bn-plus Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund and played a key role in US foreign exchange policy including coordinating the Treasury’s semi-annual foreign exchange report on China and other countries.

Alexej Jordanov

Content Architect

GoldRepublic

Alexej Jordanov is host of Macroscopic. Macroscopic is a podcast featuring high-level discussions with globally respected voices in macroeconomics, monetary policy and financial markets. He is also responsible for content and media at GoldRepublic and contributed to OMFIF’s report ‘Gold and the new world disorder’.