Some reflections on the first hour in Mayfair…
President Sir Roger Carr kicked things off. The organisation sees exporting at the linchpin of economic recovery, and growth needs to come from new markets. It is also putting focus into large mid-sized companies… which seems sensible having recently made the move myself from a successfully exporting, mid-sized service company.
Jim o’Neill from Goldman Sachs was next up, and as the man who created the acronym BRIC, was able to give some fascinating context to our current doom and gloom. The past ten years had seen the UK economy grow from $1.5T GDP to $2.6T. The same period saw the BRIC group grow from $3T to $13.5T. As o’Neill put it, these aren’t emerging economies any more… They are growing economies.
Finally, before coffee, Sergio Marchionne, head of Fiat and Chrysler. Growing economy sales growth is just an imperative for them now… not some sort of strategic plan.
My main thought after the session… It’s possibly not a great time to be working for a foreign owned sales subsidiary in the UK at the moment, because it seems the future of UK industry lies overseas…
Next up- the PM.
mmitII 