Boards used to plan for a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. When it comes to AI, as one director put it, BANI is the better lens: brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible. That framing opened the Institute of Corporate Directors Malaysia's (ICDM) first Responsible AI Board training, developed and delivered by APAC Advisors' Steven Okun, Megan Willis and Noemie Viterale. In Malaysia, the risks are already visible. Data centres use more than 9% of

The final pre-election stop on the APAC Advisors Midterm Madness 2026 Tour took place at The Nanson, where our CEO Steven Okun warned that the Blue Wave may not be as big as it looks. Steve's concern is that Elon Musk's millions, together with voter intimidation and suppression efforts led by Musk and President Trump, could turn it into a "Blue Trickle", leaving the Democrats with a narrow majority in the House and the Republicans still in control of the Senate. He then put t

In a new commentary for CNA, our CEO Steven Okun looks at how the US and its trading partners are responding to what many now call China Shock 2.0. President Trump's tariffs and America First trade policy often put the US at odds with its partners, while the "middle powers" work to uphold the rules-based trading system without leaning too heavily on either Washington or Beijing. But Steve argues that when it comes to protecting their domestic markets from Chinese overcapacity

Days before the US midterms, our CEO Steven Okun joined Steve Lai on BBC News to explain why Republican candidates look set to be swamped by a Blue Wave. Steve points to what he calls Trump's terrible trio: tariffs, especially on Canada; a forever war with Iran that is hitting American family finances; and the President's interventions in Senate primaries, which have produced candidates who are badly underperforming in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. The Republicans

Two weeks before the US midterms, our CEO Steven Okun went on CNBC this morning with a warning for the business community. His read is that Democrats will take the House and probably the Senate. The coalition that carried President Trump in 2024 is coming apart, and he's now down 20 points with Latino voters and 17 with young men. What Steve wants companies to think about is the anger behind those numbers, because a lot of it is aimed at business. Profits are up while corpora

Steven Okun chaired the 2026 PRCA APAC Corporate Affairs Forum, which explored key priorities for public affairs leaders in today’s geopolitical landscape. A session featuring David Black highlighted the need to move upstream to shape business decisions before they are made, and to focus on power mapping rather than simply tracking developments. Glenn Wray of Blackbox and Noemie Viterale of APAC Advisors contributed to the session, which emphasised interpreting political and

When investors want Asian growth without China risk, where does the money go? More and more, to Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Steven Okun, advisor to The GR Company, moderated their private capital breakfast in Singapore. On the panel were Juyun Moon, Executive Director at GR Korea, Ambassador Lee Sing Ying, Senior Advisor at GR Taiwan, and Jakob Edberg, President & CEO of The GR Company. Funds that carve out China have become a standard request from LPs. The markets picking up th

Steven Okun was recognised as a champion for gender equality at the 43rd edition of House of Rose Professional Pte. Ltd.'s Break the Ceiling Touch the Sky in Singapore! He shared the recognition with Judit Pach and others in a room full of leaders who have spent years making the business case for women in leadership. Earlier in the day he gave an expert talk, “Winning in a Geopolitically Challenged World,” on why companies need to link sustainability, gender equality included

The last time a US president was this unpopular a month before the midterms, his party lost the House and the Senate. That was George W. Bush in 2006, at 35.6%. Trump is at ~35% today. That's where our CEO Steven Okun started when CNA asked him back this to brief its journalists and producers on the midterms, the third election cycle in a row he's done it. The Senate map is harder for Democrats this time, but the House looks likely to change hands. For a newsroom in Asia, wh

We asked a simple question: what is the Democratic brand today? Peter Goelz answered in three words: "There isn't one." It was a fitting start to our second Midterm Election Series session, where Peter and Thurgood Marshall Jr joined our CEO, Steven Okun, with 30 days to go to the vote. On paper, Democrats should be celebrating. Past wave elections were won with a generic ballot lead of about a touchdown, and Democrats are at 8.4 points today. But a late flood of Republican

U.S. Customs and Border Protection blocked palm oil from two Indonesian plantations, citing debt bondage, withheld wages and retained identity documents. It set the stage for our CEO Steven Okun to unpack emerging non-trade regulations at the Singapore Business Federation’s Future of Trade Forum, with Ernie Koh and Philipp Dupuis, moderated by Kala Anandarajah, BBM. None of this is new. CBP's mandate dates back to the Tariff Act of 1930, and it's based on International Labou

For investors, the real risk with AI may have less to do with the technology than with the reaction to it. Data center projects are being blocked, AI-driven layoffs keep making headlines, and politicians who were courting AI investment only a year ago are now asking who will pay for the water, the power and the lost jobs. At Interogo Group's Global Private Equity's sustainability event, CEO Steven Okun told investors not to wait for regulators to answer that question for them

US-China relations will likely be as good as it gets for some time, says US politics observer Steven Okun. SINGAPORE: The second summit of 2026 between United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping did nothing to address the core tensions in US-China relations. Though the two countries agreed to extend a trade truce until January 2027, the trade war remains, as do all the other areas of contention between Washington and Beijing. US grievances with unfa

Our CEO Steven Okun was on stage at the Asia Financial Markets Forum, organised by Financial Markets Association of Singapore, breaking down what the US midterms mean for markets watching from Asia. A Republican House is close to a done deal, he told the room, but the Senate is a real contest, and the bigger risk sits somewhere less obvious: a contested result, with local officials refusing to certify, tipping into a genuine constitutional crisis. That's the kind of unknown m

The most expensive mistake in politics, according to Greg Schultz, is talking to the loudest voters instead of the most numerous ones. At our first session of APAC Advisors' Midterm Election Series, Schultz — who managed Biden's 2020 primary campaign after running the Obama-Biden re-election in 2012 in Ohio — walked us through a pattern he's watched repeat since 2020: Democratic strategy gets built around a small, vocal, online slice of the electorate, while the unglamorous w

Two of Singapore's living legends, in one room, telling stories most of us have only read about. At the latest Nanson Book Talk, our CEO Steven Okun joined a conversation with Tommy Koh and Daljit Singh around their memoirs - two men whose careers trace almost the entire arc of modern Singapore, from the earliest days of independence to today. The stories ranged from daily life nearly 70 years ago, to Lt Col Daljeet Singh's account of the fall of South Vietnam and its impact

The businesses that adapt early to engage China, India and Asean will help draft Asia’s next chapter and profit from it Kishore MahbubaniandSteven Okun Published: 4:30pm, 15 Sep 2026Updated: 5:21pm, 15 Sep 2026 The ending of the American century is coinciding with an Asian renaissance. America remains the world’s largest economy and will stay that way for another decade or two. But its economy no longer dominates the world. And its “America first” policy has partners and alli

As the American century fades, the Asian renaissance begins. Kishore Mahbubani sat down with our CEO Steven Okun for a fireside chat at the US-ASEAN Business Council's Strategic Business Forum. ASEAN isn't westernizing it's modernizing, on its own terms, shaped for centuries by deep cultural ties to the two giants on its borders, India and China. An image for how the region moves is like a crab: sideways, sometimes backwards, sometimes forwards - never in a straight line, bu

Forget the usual swing voters. The “precariat” is the new voting base shaping the midterms. They're those living with chronic insecurity - unstable work, unpredictable income and few of the safety nets once taken for granted. As part of Steven Okun’s Geopolitical Series at The Nanson, we explored what could shape the midterms and US-China relations, in discussion with Deborah Elms, Damien Ma and Sonal Varma. This insecurity cuts across the US political and economic landscape.

At the The American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore (AmCham Singapore)'s Regional Economic Conference, our CEO Steven Okun and Manager Noemie Viterale led Workshop 3: The Imperative for Business to Adapt to Changing Geopolitics. The session covered how public affairs is changing for U.S.-headquartered companies and those doing business with the U.S., where new opportunities are emerging, and why companies need to play the long game. A recurring thread throughout: resilience