Speakers

Dr. Taimur Baig

Taimur Baig, Ph.D, heads global economics as well as macro strategy for interest rate, credit, and currency at DBS Group Research. He also advises the bank on risk management and investment strategy.

Prior to joining DBS, Dr. Baig was a Principal Economist at the Economic Policy Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Earlier, he spent nine years at Deutsche Bank’s Singapore office, where his last position was Managing Director and Chief Economist, Asia.
During 1999-2007, he was based in Washington, DC, at the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, where his last position was Senior Economist.

Dr. Baig has published extensively for both specialists and a general audience, on areas including monetary policy, digital currency, financial technology, climate change, demographics, frontier markets, fiscal policy efficacy, and financial market contagion. He is the host of “Kopi Time,” a widely followed podcast series on markets and economies.

Dr. Baig sits as a council member for the Asian Financial Think Tank, Economic Society of Singapore, and Women’s World Banking.

Dr. Baig holds a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He attended London School of Economics and Wabash College for his B.A. in Economics.

Assoc Prof. Simon Tay

Simon SC Tay is a public intellectual as well as an advisor to major corporations and policymakers.
Prof Tay has held several public appointments for Singapore including as an independent Member of Parliament (1997-2001); Chairman of the National Environment Agency (2002-08) and an Expert and Eminent Person in the ASEAN Regional Forum (2002–2019). He also coordinated the country’s equivalent of the Peace Corps (1990-93). In 2006, Prof Tay received a National Day Award.
Since 2020, Tay has been appointed an Ambassador for Singapore, currently accredited to Greece on a non-residential basis. He is also Singapore’s chairman for the EU Singapore Free trade agreement domestic advisory group focusing on sustainability and trade.
Based in Singapore, he is Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, the country’s oldest think tank. The SIIA’s work focuses on the politics, economic policies and sustainability challenges that matter to corporations and policymakers. The SIIA anchors several key initiatives with the ASEAN Asia Forum, Sustainable World Resources Dialogue and in green finance and climate change policy. It was also the key knowledge partner for Singapore’s Emerging Stronger Taskforce to strategise paths forward from the pandemic.
He is concurrently a tenured Associate Professor, teaching international law at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and has also taught at Harvard Law School, the Fletcher School and Yale University. Prof Tay is also Senior Consultant at WongPartnership, a leading Asian law firm of some 300 lawyers and with offices in ASEAN, China and the Middle East. He served on boards for leading global companies including MUFG Bank of Japan, Toyota Japan, and Deutsche Boerse (Asia), and was previously Corporate Advisor to Temasek Holdings (2006-09).

Mr. Kiren Kumar

Mr Kiren Kumar assumed the appointment of Deputy Chief Executive (Development) of Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on 1 January 2021. He spearheads the development of Singapore’s digital economy and drives the implementation of the ICT industry strategy across both industry verticals and economic horizontals. Mr Kiren oversees both the Sectoral Transformation Group and Digital Industry & Talent Group to accelerate digitalisation across the industries and businesses to grow Singapore’s digital economy. Mr Kiren will also lead human capital development efforts to provide the right skillsets for ICM sectors as well as raise the digital literacy of Singapore’s workforce.

Prior to holding office as DCE (Development) in IMDA, Mr Kiren was the Assistant Chief Executive (Digital Industry and Talent) at IMDA and Executive Vice President (Digital Industry) at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).
Mr Kiren joined EDB in 2001 and took on various portfolios such as economic policy formulation and industry development in the Info-Comms & Media, Electronics and Precision Engineering sectors as well as worked closely with various multinational corporations on their Asian strategies and investments into Singapore.

In 2004, Mr Kiren was seconded to the International Enterprise Singapore where he assisted Singapore based companies to expand into the Asian, European and American markets.