Nasser Saidi, former chief economist at DIFC, gave the keynote at the 2013 Asian Financial Forum (AFF). Entitled “Asian financial transformation: Developing an RMB zone & Redback market” Nasser described the systemic risks of a hub-spoke financial system predicated on too big to fail institutions in advanced economies. Instead, given the growing strength of Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and Asian markets, he advocated a more distributed ‘spiders-web’ of global financial centres, underpinned by an RMB Zone and Redback market.