There are too many Davos round-ups around to add another other than to say, the over-riding sense I get is that people are looking for a new way forward for global capitalism and that the idea of totally free and unfettered markets is pretty much dead. We at Edelman would say that means in some form that companies are headed more towards a wider stakeholder focused future than just a shareholder/profit focused future and that the way to achieve that is through a programme of public engagament where companies actively seek to work for mutual benefit with NGO’s, communities and civic society as well as transacting the business of business.
Possibly more interesting and certainly more pithy are my tweets from various sessions some of which I re-produce here:
President Tanzania ‘Look at Africa as a place that could feed the world. It has the land, climate + water. All it needs is tech’
Ellen Kullman, CEO of DuPont not surprisingly pro GMO also, but like Gates says decision (for or against GMO usage) is for each country to take
Bill Gates says that each country will have to decide if GMOs should be used to help increase food yields
WPP boss nicely deflected Cameron’s observation that moving HQ from London 2 Dublin was anti-Uk by calling himself Martin O’Sorrell
David Cameron just spoke to UK businessman at a lunch in Davos. He looked and sounded very assured and at home
Everyone agrees Doha trade round is important to get growth going again, but no-one seems confident it will succeed
John Evans: ‘The fairer a society is (in terms of wealth equality) the better it does economically over the long term’
David Cameron says one of the keys to getting global economic growth is reviving the Doha trade agreement
Mr Trichet, ECB,”It is underetimated how close we were to a fully fledged depression”
“The relationships between banks and government and so (banks and…) society has changed irrevocably”, Peter Sands, Standard Chartered
President Zuma answers question that polygamy is a form of discrimination by suggesting that (this) view is a form of cultural superiority (and therefore discriminatory too)
The moderator jokes that President Zuma brought his whole cabinet to Davos to avoid risk of coup
Lee Myung -Bak thePresident of Korea:G20 will address issue of financial institutions being too big to fail. Bye, bye mega-banks?
Lee Myung -Bak thePresident of Korea: ‘policy cooperation between G20 major reason for aversion of global depression ‘
Ruben Vardanian: to rebuild trust; “we have to change the success measurement system beyond just money and share price”
“does anglo-saxon business REALLY understand that it has TO WORK for society” q’ from the floor (implication that Euro bus’ does)
“Would Lehman Brothers have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters” question from the floor
“I do believe that business is now looking beyond the short-term and is now thinking of more stakeholders”
John Monks ‘I don’t believe that the short term thinking that got us into this problem is over’
Ruben Vardanian “Every year we ask employees ‘do you trust top management’? For last 2 years trust went down so we did not get paid”
Tim Flynn: “It’s not about shareholder return any more, it’s about stakeholder reform”
John Monks ‘we have a system where the real world serves the financial world rather than other way around’
“Without trust a market economy cannot work”
“Wall Street’s compensation structure provoked instability”
Phillip Jennings; The working man is angry at wage inequality.
In the Rebuilding economics session….10 pc of pop command 90 pc of resources
Jacob Frankel JP Morgan: “deep recession is a breeding ground for protectionism and nationalism”
If banks’ shareholders had transparency on things like who got paid bonuses and how much they might be reined in a bit
Without harmonised global financial regulation, we will create arbitrage between regulatory regimes
Peter Levene, Lloyds of London claims that the financial industry can self regulate and doesn’t need government intervention. hmmmmm
“We have weapons that have one major defect; they have no enemy” on the claim the US military budget is a problem
“burning deficits require governments to make very tough decisions and some like US have no experience of that” CNBC debate
“There is an illusion of normalcy”
Davos tweets can be found searching for #davos and #WEF via twitter
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