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    ABSTRACTS

    WBAF Annual Congress 2018

    Unlocking the Potential for Innovation: Angel Investors Partnering with Family Offices and Wealth Management Institutions

    19 February 2018, Istanbul

    Building on the success of the 2017 World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF), this year’s forum will focus on the theme ‘Unlocking the Potential for Innovation: Angel Investors Partnering with Family Offices and Wealth Management Institutions’. The discussions will explore how family offices and wealth management institutions can foster open innovation and deliver more business value through partnerships with angel investors, start-ups, scale-ups, high-growth businesses and SMEs.

    Family offices and wealth management institutions are booming globally.

    Internationally recognised reports indicate that there are more than 10,000 single-family offices in operation throughout the world, at least half of which have been established in the past 15 years. A family should normally be worth between $100 million and $500 million for a single-family office to be financially viable. Multi-family offices, by contrast, offer affordable services for ultra-high net worth families with assets of approximately $50 million. In North America alone, the next three decades will see nearly $30 trillion in assets transferred from baby boomers to their heirs.

    • WBAF Agenda 2018: Expected outputs from Summit Chairs

      For the first time ever, the World Business Angels Investment Forum, as the biggest annual gathering of the world early stage equity and investment markets, will have 5 important summits running concurrently: the WBAF Annual Conference 2018 for angel investors, the Take Invest Summit 2018 for start-ups and scale-ups, the FinTech Summit 2018 for finance executives, the Impact Investment Summit 2018 for impact investors, and the CEO-Preneurship Summit 2018 for CEOs of global $100-million-dollar-plus companies. Eacg will address the main challenges and opportunities of the world economy in 2018. This session is to give an overview of what are we going to talk about in these summits, how we built the content, how we designed WBAF 2018 and what the main criterion were for the selection of invited speakers. At the end of this session, you will have an idea about the expected outputs of WBAF 2018.

    • Global Action Plans of Global Leaders: Unlocking the potential for innovating and developing global partnerships for economic development and for achieving the sustainable development goals of the United Nations

      On 25 September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with a new set of development goals that are collectively called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Agenda is a culmination of many years of negotiation and was endorsed by all 193 member-nations of the UN General Assembly, both developed and developing – and applies to all countries. Then-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon noted that ‘’the new agenda is a promise by leaders to all people everywhere. It is an agenda for people, to end poverty in all of its forms – an agenda for the planet, our common home.’’ In this session, you will hear about the 2018 action plans of global leaders of early and post-early stage equity markets in response to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

    • New Rules of Wealth Management: Including more angel-backed investments and private equity in a diversified family office portfolio

      Any family making use of wealth management services has a twofold responsibility: to understand where their money is going and to understand their relationship to it. Unfortunately, until now, inclusion of early stage investments in the portfolios managed by family offices and wealth management executives were very close to none. So it is now time to start a dialogue between wealth management executives and players of early stage equity market such as angel investors, accelerators, private equity and crowdfunding platforms. This panel aims to develop a dialogue on including early stage investments in wealth management portfolios. How can we develop a start-up portfolio to attract more family offices to invest? How can we help families develop a good understanding of start-up and scale-up investments? How can we mitigate the risks of early stage equities to attract more wealth management in the ecosystem? This session will propose an innovative methodology to attract global wealth management for early and post-early stage equity markets.

    • The rise of the Secondary Market: Global Challenges and opportunities in regulated and un-regulated secondary markets, easing access to finance for start-ups, scale-ups, high-growth businesses and SMEs

      World capital markets meet with an unstoppable rise of secondary markets. Since reaching liquidity is so expensive and time consuming via IPOs, alternative ways to replace IPO liquidity are increasing tremendously in developed countries. Most of the alternatives involve secondary markets and unregulated secondary markets. This panel will discuss the challenges and opportunities for investors when they encounter options at secondary market(s). How can regulators convert challenges to opportunities to empower the world economy? What will be the trend in secondary markets in the upcoming years? How can securities and stock exchange authorities and unregulated market players sit around the same table to discover innovative financial instruments to ease access to smart finance?

    • New Roles for Development Banks: Leading co-investments and financing high-growth businesses to empower the early and post-early stage investment market

      Private banks and private investors are unwilling to risk their capital for long-term investments in sustainability for fear that those investments are neither economically nor financially viable. A global framework is therefore being prepared to better incentivise sustainable private investment and public-private partnerships. At the July 2015United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, a comprehensive policy framework was adopted which underscored the potential role that development banks could play in achieving sustainability. This panel will attempt to discover ways to include angel investors, accelerators, innovation centres, incubation centres and crowdfunding platforms in developing a new role for development banks. How can partnerships be developed between angel investors and development banks to fuel innovation? How can development banks lead/create co-investment funds to support the start-up ecosystem? How can development banks take more active role in developing partnerships between private and public institutions to invest in SMEs?

    • Angel Investment as a New Investment Instrument for Islamic Finance

      By the end of 2018, Islamic finance assets will reach $2.7 trillion, which is 2% of global finance assets. Islamic banks, in addition to local and international players of capital markets, are set to benefit from this growth sector. But when you examine Islamic investment assets and portfolios, early stage investments are almost non-existent. Angel investment, on the other hand, is booming globally and is expected to reach a $50 billion market size by 2020. What is interesting is that angel investment is 100% compatible with Islamic investment principles and, perhaps surprisingly, the Islamic finance ecosystem is not yet familiar with angel investment., How can we create an awareness of angel investment in Islamic finance ecosystem? How can we develop co-investment funds between Islamic finance instruments and angel investors? How can we change the mindset of investors in Islamic countries to move from investing in real estate to investing in start-ups?

    • The G20 Agenda on Angel Investment and Early Stage Investment Markets: Converting public finance to smart finance in cooperation with angel investors

      Promoting innovation and sustainable industrialisation requires easy access to finance and financial services that facilitate investment. The IFC estimates there are more than 360 million to 440 million formal and informal micro, medium, and small enterprises (MESMEs) worldwide. According to the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, many of these firms cite limited access to finance as one of their main constraints to growth. However, for the first time ever, proposals approved by G20 leaders last July in Hamburg included a reference to the importance of angel investment as an innovative source of finance to fuel innovation and the entrepreneurship ecosystem. This panel session will build on the G20 framework to try to ease access to finance globally. How can G20 countries include more public money to early stage investment markets? What would be the best pathway to connect know-how, mentorship, and the network of angel investors with G20 economies to support financial freedom for start-ups, scale-ups and high-growth businesses? How can we convert the G20’s public finance to smart finance in co-operation with angel investors?

    • Regional Focus: The V4 Early Stage Investment Market and Connecting the International Visegrad Fund with Global Capital Markets

      From July 2017 to June 2018, Hungary will be holding the rotating presidency of the Visegrad Group for the fifth time. The theme, V4 Connects, reflects the significant positive impact of the Visegrad Cooperation in connecting the four countries (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland) in terms of politics, economy and culture, while also focusing on tasks related to connectivity: improving energy and transport links in broader region, and working on a well-connected, innovative region ready for the digital age. Equally important is the V4 presidency’s commitment to further improving dialogue, trust and cooperation between the V4 and other partners, both within the EU and globally. The presidency supports the successful functioning of the International Visegrad Fund, the V4’s common institution working for strengthening the relations in the V4 region. The presidency will initiate the renewal of the Fund’s mobility scholarship schemes, including providing opportunities for researchers and start-ups. This session will give insights from V4 countries about the start-up and scale-up ecosystem in their respective countries. Panellists will discuss possible ways of creating co-investment funds with global investors to empower the V4 and EU entrepreneurial ecosystem, and ways in which the V4 Fund can be connected with global capital markets.

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