• Global Debt Supercycle – its genesis and demise.
• the resultant Financial Repression and the constraints now imposed both on future       economic  growth and central bank flexibility.
• illustrate these global themes by considering their impact on the Irish property market.
• consider the equity markets and in particular the recent Chinese equity market bubble and  burst
• what lessons we can lean from stockmarket bubbles and we examine the current  background for equity markets (including Irish equities) against this context.

Frank O’Brien has well over forty year’s experience of investment research and fund management as an investment analyst, fund manager and chief investment officer.   His experience ranges over all major asset classes and across the full spectrum of client types.

In November 1998 Frank fulfilled a long-planned ambition by launching Frank O’Brien Investment Strategies Ltd.  The Company is a financial markets consultancy supporting the investment industry – industry bodies, investment institutions and investment intermediaries – on structures, process, styles,skill sets, resourcing and strategies.

Frank frequently acts as an expert witness in court cases. He is a Director of a number of companies and is a Trustee of four large pension funds.

Frank is a Certified Accountant. He was Chairman of ACCA Ireland’s Financial Services Network, 1998-2000, and President ACCA Ireland in 2004/5. He is a founding member and a former Chairman of the Society of Investment Analysts in Ireland.

Under the Investment Faculty Ireland brand, together with Brian O’Loughlin, Frank delivers specialist investment training, produces customised investment research and co-authored “Fundamentals of Investment – An Irish Perspective”.   During 2002/3 Frank wrote, under a commission from the Irish Association of Pension Funds, a series of three booklets on investment for pension fund trustees.

Brian O’Loughlin qualified as an economist to Masters Degree level in 1978. He subsequently worked with the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and then joined Irish Life Assurance as an Economist in its Investment Department. He then worked in a variety of fund management roles and rose to the position of Head of Fund Management in Irish Life from 1987-1992. He has held senior positions with a number of stock broking firms including NCB Stockbrokers and ABN Amro Stockbrokers, Dublin.

Since 1999 he has been providing independent investment advisory and investment training services to individuals and institutions. Brian is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment. He has co-authored a number of industry research publications including: ‘The Fundamentals of Investment – an Irish Perspective’, 2nd ed. Brian O’Loughlin and Frank O’Brien, Gill and Macmillan, 2011.