"Without global governance, the world is not ready for progress”

Global corporates are operating in an increasingly unstable world, where extreme economic and geopolitical risks are posing significant challenges for businesses today.

This will be one of the key messages that will kick start this afternoon’s keynote presentations on economic and geopolitical risks.

Speaking to StrategicRISK ahead of his presentation this afternoon – one of three on economic and geopolitical risks – Philippe Chalmin, Économiste spécialiste des matières premières, at specialist study group for the analysis of global raw materials and commodities markets, CYCLOPE, said: “There is no global governance. We can’t say that the world is ready for progress as far as global governance is concerned.

“Risk management is therefore more and more important to companies now than ever before.”

His comments refer to the volatile nature of the world’s markets and the extreme risk, or in other words the global risks, that have take place in the last two decades.

He explained: “Just before the 21^st century, economists were optimistic that globalisation would lead to significant global economic growth. It was a time when the world’s GPD growth was more than 5% and businesses were optimistic about the opportunities in emerging markets.

“But the 21^st century has experienced many extreme risks, the 9/11 attacks in the US and the Friday the 13^th attacks in France, for example. There are a number of civil and religious wars in and around the Middle East, and in 2008; we suffered the global financial crisis.

“And now, we are experiencing the collapse of world’s commodity prices.

“We are living in an unstable world, without any global governance. We have had many big meetings, such as G78, G20, and WTO conferences but we haven’t achieved much.”

The theme of this afternoon’s sessions, extreme risks, will be discussed in three keynote presentations, with the aim of identifying the main challenges and “finding, perhaps not answers, but a way of apprehending them for companies and risk managers,” said Chalmin, who will moderate the presentations.