Current Account »

• Davos reaches out to the masses

  January 9, 2012 @ 2:27 pm | by John Collins

  

  A member of the Swiss special police forces stands on the roof of a hotel in Davos as the annual meeting in the alpine resort got under way last January. Photograph: Reuters

  With everyone from Bono to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Peter Sutherland to George Soros, heading to the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Davos every January, it’s little surprise that the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum has been accused of being a little exclusive. Although the number of bankers in attendance has fallen off since the crisis of 2008, the annual event, which takes place from January 25th-29th this year, can still be considered Glastonbury for the world’s monied and powerful elite.

  The Forum is now using social media to try and change those perceptions and this year is pushing its Ask a Leader programme hard. Using its YouTube channel the public is being asked to submit questions it would like to see answered  by “heads of state and government, leaders from business and civil society, heads of international organizations, as well as media and academics”. The submitted questions will be voted on with the most popular getting a response from a special video booth at the event.

  It’s hard to see how the views of the hoi polloi will make much impact at the end of the month but those who feel excluded from the proceedings in Davos can’t say they weren’t asked for their opinion.

• Sutherland has a pop at Clinton on Doha trade talks paralysis

  January 31, 2009 @ 8:54 pm | by Simon Carswell

  One issue in Davos that constantly emerged year after year, without any resolution, is the failure to come up with a world trade agreement between the richest and poorest nations in the world. The so-called Doha round of talks (named after the Qatari capital where they started way back in 2001) have been dragging on for years.

  It’s a subject that gets Irish businessman Peter Sutherland, a former head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), riled up. Sutherland concluded the Uruquay round of talks back in the 1990s and oversaw the transition from GATT, of which he became director general in 1993, to WTO. It was some achievement in light of almost eight years of paralysis on the Doha round. (more…)

• Getting confidence back – Davos told it’s a question of coconuts

  @ 12:03 pm | by Simon Carswell

  Montek Alhluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s planning commission, told delegates at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland this morning that the world needed to have confidence again. He said that confidence grows like a coconut tree but falls like a coconut. He said that India was still expecting 7 per cent economic growth this year. This isn’t far off what Chinese premier Wen Jiabao predicted for his country during his speech in Davos on Wednesday night – he said that even though he believed China’s forecast of 8 per cent growth this year was “a tall order” he still believed it was attainable.

  This morning Japanese prime minister Taro Aso  said he had decided on an economic stimulus package of about 75 trillion yen or US$840 billion with fiscal measures amounting to 12 trillion yen or $135 billion, which corresponds to about 2 per cent of Japan’s GDP. Mr Aso said that he would pledge not less than $17 billion in development assistance to Asian countries. The Japanese PM ended his speech with a quote from French philosopher Alain: “Pessimism comes our passions, optimism from the will.” Certainly, the Russian and Asian participants are far more sanguine than their Western counterparts at Davos this year.

  It’s worth noting that Japan treated delegates to a fine sushi lunch in Davos headquarters, the Congress Centre – a sign that at least there is no culinary slump at the Swiss think-in this year.

• Just who was calling Gordon Brown, Blair perhaps?

  January 30, 2009 @ 6:44 pm | by Simon Carswell

  Gordon Brown was elaborating on his ideas to encourage the resumption of the lending by the banks at a press conference at the Davos economic forum when his mobile phone went off. He continued talking until he realised he was ringing. “Sorry, that’s my phone,” he said, to laughter from the assembled reporters.

• Gordon Brown says international action is needed to solve crisis

  @ 5:46 pm | by Simon Carswell

  British prime minister Gordon Brown is speaking at the Davos economic forum at the moment and has called for more international cooperation, like many of the other speakers this week. Part one was the recapitalisation of the banks, he says, part two involves fiscal stimulus in individual countries and part three needs to be some sort of international insurance scheme, like the one the UK is working on, to take out the banks’ bad assets. He says that if governments don’t act together to come up with such a scheme, then banks will withdraw from foreign markets and focus on their home markets and lending will dry up, exacerbating the crisis. Without this, there will be protectionism. “We need that international action and that is why the G20 (nations) is so important.”

• Partying on through the slump, Davos dances the blues away

  @ 5:06 pm | by Simon Carswell

  The only party that was really kicking last night at Davos hotspot, the Steigenberger Belvedere Hotel, was the bash hosted by consultants McKinsey. The rest were practically empty. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “nightcap” (Davos-speak for an economists’ party) last night was deserted, while KPMG’s party the previous night was equally dead.

  Participants in the Swiss think-in/economic party obviously want to avoid the dreaded auditors. This is hardly a surprise – at a time of “illiquid markets”, they’ll probably tell you how little your sequined party suit and dancing snow boots are worth, applying stringent mark-to-market accounting standards. Yes, at party time, avoid the auditors. (more…)

• Cowen has no time for skiing in Davos, O’Brien not worried by Slim

  @ 4:36 pm | by Simon Carswell

  Taoiseach Brian Cowen had a busy morning at the Davos economic forum today, meeting world leaders in back-to-back sessions. Among the leaders he met was Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister of Sweden, which takes over the European presidency in July. No doubt the Taoiseach will have picked his brain about how the Nordic country bailed out its banks in the early 1990s without digging into the pockets of taxpayers. The Swedish rescue appears to be something of a blueprint for any government looking at how to fix a banking system – so, in other words, most governments.

  All eyes are on Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on whether they will create a good bank/bad bank system, just like Sweden did, or follow the UK creating some sort of insurance scheme for the toxic loans. We hear that a decision from the Government on the final billion in the €3 billion recapitalisation each for Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland could happen very soon. No doubt Cowen will have picked up the negative vibe in Davos and move more quickly. (more…)

• Middle East tensions erupt in Davos (of all places)

  January 29, 2009 @ 9:41 pm | by Simon Carswell

  The second day of Davos ended with a minor diplomatic spat when the Turkish prime minister wasn’t given time to respond to comments by Israeli president Shimon Peres in a discussion about the conflict in Gaza. The Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan bounded off the stage at the World Eonomic Forum after a verbal exchange with Mr Peres.

  Erdogan tried to speak as the scheduled discussion was ending yesterday evening, asking the moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, to let him speak again in response to Mr Peres. (more…)

• Davos moves from economic gloom to politics

  @ 3:04 pm | by Simon Carswell

  It’s no surprise that politics should have eventually taken centre stage at the Davos economic forum given the number of heads of state and government this year. Some 40 leaders are in attendance – more than double the number that were here last year. One delegate noted that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has a fleet of 20 SUVs travelling with him and that the security was so heavy at one dinner last night that it took about 20 minutes to through the front door of a hotel because of the security measures introduced to accommodate Mr Putin’s visit to the Swiss resort.

  Davos moved on from the economic gloom that permeated yesterday afternoon to politics later in the evening. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (who is also travelling with a very large entourage) and Mr Putin caused quite a stir in their keynote addresses at the Swiss gathering last night, arguing that they are the big boys on the world economic stage now. (more…)

• McCreevy warns that fixing banking supervision will not solve crisis

  @ 2:02 pm | by Simon Carswell

  Despite the flak being taken by banking regulators over the global financial mess – 51 per cent of delegates in a survey yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos blamed poor supervision of the financial sector – Ireland’s EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has said in interviews in the Swiss resort this morning that fixing regulation alone won’t solve the crisis. He said that the banking meltdown has shown the need for a pan-European monitoring of banks with cross-border businesses, but said that member states were still opposing this and that it was a “very vexed” issue. (more…)

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