The idea that sovereign nations of the Far East will roll over and let the likes of Citigroup, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland come in and dominate their financial services industries is naive.None the less, Mr Prince has high hopes for the future. What's more, any growth industry invariably attracts a high degree of competition, as well as an army of chancers and ne'er-do-wells. Financial services, moreover, are prone to repeated periods of crisis and sometimes spectacular loss of value.No human activity is linear, perfectly orderly and predictable and there are almost bound to be ups and downs along the way. "We are looking", he said, "at a future of growth that has the potential to exceed our largest expectations." Can it really be that simple? Are Citigroup, HSBC, and even Lloyd's of London, about to enter a new golden age of unparalleled growth and prosperity? Regrettably, this is where the prediction game becomes a great deal less easy.

As Mr Prince points out, governments don't always make the right choices, and markets don't always cooperate. Huge new pools of assets stand to be created over the years ahead in the fast growing economies of the developing world, all of which will require management and stewardship. Following on from this is what promises to be the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth the world has ever seen, all of which again is manna from heaven for the financial services industry.In a speech this week to the Lloyd's of London annual dinner, Chuck Prince, chief executive of Citigroup, the world's largest bank, put it succinctly. That in turn creates demand for health care and financial services. The ageing process compounds the effect by making populations and governments realise that present pay as you go healthcare and pension arrangements are quite incapable of meeting the challenge of an ageing population. Not only are they likely to prove unaffordable, but in most cases they also fall far short of rising expectations for living standards.Spending priorities among human beings as they grow more wealthy follow a well worn pattern First comes food. Once you've fed yourself, then comes a decent roof over your head.

After that come the consumer durables and the little luxuries Then comes education for one's children, leisure and travel. Once these aspirations are met, then people start to worry about their health and what happens if it fails.So they buy insurance and they start to save. Both of them stand to reap huge benefits from changing demographics and levels of economic prosperity, particularly in the developing economies of the Far East and India. Rising prosperity is fast creating a vast new middle class from the subsistence populations of the past. Most investment in equities is a lottery, but it is usually possible with some degree of certainty at least to identify the growth industries of the future, if not its companies.