Singapore's Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam received the Distinguished Leadership and Service Award by the US Institute of International Finance (IIF) for his contribution to global financial governance and public service.
Singapore's Prime Minister's Office in a media release said Mr Tharman, who was in Washington DC for this year's annual meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), received the award on Thursday, October 17.
In his acceptance speech, Mr Tharman said, "It is to the credit of my colleagues at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and in the Singapore Government, and internationally, whom I have been working with to build resilient and growth-oriented financial markets," he added.
Mr Tharman, who is also chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, shared the award along with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. Incidentally, both were front runners for the IMF chief's post that went to Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva, said an NYT report in July.
In a statement IIF president and chief executive Timothy D Adams said, "Governor Carney and Senior Minister Tharman are two of the brightest and most capable people I've had the honour to work with. Both are world-class people." He described Mr Tharman as "a visionary" who has been a leading proponent of global reforms to "de-risk and grow development finance, and to achieve more resilient capital flows".
"His ability to see around the corner and consider both the economic implications and the possibilities from a central banker's lens provides a unique and highly valuable perspective in our ever-evolving and increasingly digital world."
Later, Mr. Therman participated in this year's IIF annual Membership Meeting featuring a much-expanded program on digital finance topics, including 9 discussion panels and 2 roundtables, as well as a special briefing on the Bank of England's Future of Finance report. This included the Data Town Hall on October 17, which focused on four key aspects of the topical agenda in data policy.
Other notable sessions included the Future of Money, Competition in the Age of Digital Platforms, Quantum Computing and Machine Learning, and feature perspectives from not only leading IIF members, but also from the Monetary Authority of Singapore among other banking organisation, the Open Data Institute, Google, Rigetti Computing and Data Robot.
