As Facebook prepares to file its IPO documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — as soon as Wednesday, according to recent reports — the company is trying to make the argument that it adds more to the economy than a convenient way to waste time at work. By touting the economic activity it has generated and the jobs it’s created, Facebook is also trying to pre-empt criticism that the primary winners from the IPO are insiders who stand to reap billions from the offering.
One of the challenges of covering the World Economic Forum at Davos as a journalist is making sense of the whole thing. The forum is days and days of wandering conversations and endless debates on just about every subject you can imagine. So as I tried to summarize what I learned from Davos, I came [...]
There’s a growing optimism that the common European currency can be saved, but the numbers argue that this is unrealistic.
As my train pulled into the station at a snow-covered Davos a few days ago, I was prepared to be cynical. I’d had dinner the night before with an old friend, a former chairman of a major American company, who was usually a regular at Davos. But this year he stayed away, even though he [...]
Unfair trade practices and poor working conditions in the developing world, issues that dominated the WEF agenda a decade ago, haven’t been raised at all. Instead, the conversation is acutely focused on the plight of the Western worker.
In 2008, after Lehman Brothers fell and the financial crisis and global recession began, the conventional wisdom was that we were entering an era in which government would take back power from business. In fact, just the opposite has happened. The high profile political figures here at Davos disappointed — Merkel was angry and depressed [...]
The topics and tropes fall faster than snowflakes here in Davos, where several thousand of the world’s leading business people, politicians and policy makers gather once a year for an annual think-fest. And with literally hundreds of panels, debates, interviews, workshops and symposia taking place, it would be impossible to capture all of the ideas competing for attendees’ attention.
Here in snowy Davos, the topic of job creation has been about as popular as the passed canapés and free champagne. Not surprisingly, President Obama’s latest jobs proposals — a combination of taxing outsourcing corporations and reviving U.S. manufacturing — haven’t been as popular. It’s not hard to see why.
Last night at a cocktail party I attended in Davos, the queen of new media – Arianna Huffington – did a surprising thing. She asked people to unplug from their Blackberries and—gasp—slow down.
In a world economy gripped by fear and smothered in uncertainty, I managed to meet someone here able to shine a bright light through the gloom – Steve Ellis, worldwide managing director of consulting firm Bain & Co. Sure, we might be facing the possibility of a collapse of the euro, an emerging markets slowdown, [...]
