Fintan Farrell, Director, European Anti Poverty Network, expressed his opinion that Hedge Funds are widening the wealth divide and have a destabilising effect on the economy. He thinks that hedge funds have no regard for the impact on lives and spread precarious employment. An investment banker in the audience disagreed with him and expressed her views on what hedge funds do. Coming from a finance background, I do understand that hedge funds are only open to a limited range of qualified investors. They create a lot of wealth for themselves but that does not mean that it is unfair or illegal.

I think that there should be public debate on this as people don’t fully understand the role that hedge funds play. Sometimes people are misinformed by media and then they perpetuate these thoughts unknowingly.

Countries around the world are struggling with the challenges of poverty. What are the trends that have created this wealth divide and what can we do to make a difference as individuals and corporations? The panel discussion that I attended was quite controversial to say the least. The opinions expressed by the speakers were different from what I believed in and what many others in the audience passionately highlighted. Should government apply distributive policies or should there be a bottom up approach by both private and public sector players?

We all agreed that we need to worry about poverty because of various reasons ranging from the ethical imperative to economic growth and health and safety outcomes. Also, the definition of poverty varies by country. For example, in Romania the poverty threshold is €558 per annum whereas in Luxemburg it is €17,087 per annum. There was lot of debate about what can we do to address the wealth divide. Should the government collect more tax and then divide it out fairly? I am not sure how they would divide it fairly. Should we have a welfare state and does it serve to address the wealth divide? What social, political and economic reform do we need to address the causes and issues of poverty?

Nora Lustig, Shapiro Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Mexico, said that governments should create more transparency and accountability in how they collect taxes and how it is used. She talked about why tax revenue is below what is expected in some countries – the vicious cycle that leads to people not paying taxes as they distrust their government and low taxes leading to lower resources that in turn increases poverty. She felt that Microfinance does improve the local situation but it is not scalable, private philanthropy can help but to bring about wide spread change government had to step in and apply wealth distributive strategy. In my opinion, we need to have more than government intervention or the private philanthropy. We all need to play a role in whatever way we can, be it in contributing financially or by advocating the means for creating wealth or by creating awareness about education and how that can create opportunities. We need to support entrepreneurs not only financially but through our networks, mentoring and coaching them to create wealth and create jobs.

Government alone can’t win this battle against poverty. We all need to join forces in educating, in mentoring, in coaching, in supporting, in harnessing the power of women.