Back in his heyday, the rumour was that if you went into a meeting with Vikram Pandit unprepared, you were toast. A former academic who became known as a cerebral trader with an eye for detail, he was often the smartest guy in a room full of big-brained Wall Street types.

Six years after leaving the top job at Citigroup, Pandit has returned to his professorial tendencies. His thesis, as he describes it, and the central premise of his fintech-oriented investment firm Orogen Group, is working out how to profit from the “transition of a 20th century financial system towards a 21st century technological architecture”.