Latest Lecture:

Scotland, 50 degrees East

Anil Mehta

Allen & Overy

2pm, Thursday 1 March 2012

Anil Mehta gave a very successful lecture to the Stewart's Melville economics students and invited guests of the Trust. He examined some trends in global economics as perceived by international business leaders, some of the social and human scale aspects of globalisation and describe the work of the trust in this context. Finally,he made a link from the situation of developing countries "50 degrees east" to Scotland, to set the scene for the next lecture in the series.

Anil Mehta was a pupil at Daniel Stewart's & Melville College between 1980 and 1986, in Tay House. After school, he studied Land Economy at Aberdeen University then moved to London where he worked for a major international property investment and development company for three years. He then changed direction and went back to university, this time to Nottingham, where he studied law. Anil qualified as a lawyer in 1997 and since then received a Masters in Law at Kings College London. He has lived in China, Hong Kong and most recently Abu Dhabi where he currently lives with his wife and three young children. Most of his legal career has been with Allen & Overy, a major global law firm - with the exception of two years in which he worked as Deputy General Counsel of the Olympic Delivery Authority in London. He specialises in advising governments, investors and funders on infrastructure projects in the sports, power & water, transport and education sectors. Anil is a trustee of the Philip David Gray Memorial Trust.

Previous Lectures

Is Development Aid Worth It? 
A Case Study From Vietnam

Richard Spencer

The World Bank

3pm, Thursday 11 February 2010

First Part: How much and where does it go?

1. UK budget for to development aid, including contributions to IDA
2. What IDA contributes to Vietnam - financially - and thus by implication how much the UK contributes to Vietnam directly and indirectly.
3. How much of the IDA budget has gone to the energy sector since it re-started operating in Vietnam in 1993

Second Part: How much goes into the energy sector?

1. The energy sector in Vietnam - size and details
2. Investment needs in the energy sector
3. World Bank investments in the energy sector

Third Part: What do we get for it?

1. The electrification program in Vietnam
2. Linkages between energy sector and economic growth
3. How that translates into benefits back in UK

Richard Spencer has been with the World Bank for fourteen years, during much of which he has worked on renewable energy projects. He worked on World Bank projects in China from 1996 - 2006. Resident in Hanoi since 2005, he is now responsible for the World Bank's program of assistance for energy in Vietnam, which consists of a portfolio of about $1 billion in investments and ten or so separate advisory tasks, including power sector reform, renewable energy, energy efficiency, large hydropower, rural electrification and power transmission. He has worked on energy sector development in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Before taking up his position at the World Bank, he managed parts of the UK's energy efficiency, renewable energy and clean coal technology programs.

Understanding Global Financial Turmoil

Dr Raj Desai

Georgetown University

3pm, Thursday 27 April 2009

This talk addressed the causes, development and consequences of the financial catastorphe that began in 2007-2008.

Raj M. Desai is Associate Professor of International Development at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and in the Department of Government at Georgetown University, and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is a specialist on problems of economic reform, foreign aid, and international development.

Globalization, Growth and Equity:
Vietnam's unique development experience

Klaus Rohland

The World Bank

3pm, Monday 3 March 2008

Mr Rohland discussed what has distinguished Vietnam's development experience  over the last 20 years from many other countries, what the World Bank contributed to it and, more importantly, what the World Bank learned from  for its own approach to development.

Klaus Rohland is currently the World Bank’s Country Director for China, Mongolia and Korea in the East Asia and Pacific Region, based in Beijing. From November 2002 to March 2007 Mr Rohland was Country Director for the World Bank in Vietnam. There, Rohland oversaw the implementation of the World Bank’s largest concessional lending program in the world and led a large scale advisory program.