Euro pessimism may be hanging heavily in the air at Davos, but executives and financiers at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting remain bullish on emerging markets.
Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, told a forum panel on the global economy that the fixation of many participants on the debt crisis in Europe and high unemployment in the U.S. was overdone. “We talk about doom and gloom here in Davos,” he said. “If you would go to Brazil today and you were to talk to young people about where the world is, they would have a quite different view.”
Most emerging-markets economies have continued to perform strongly since the financial crisis. The big question is whether they have the size and dynamism to offset persistent weakness in Europe and the U.S. and sustain the global economy. The answer is an emphatic yes, according to Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC Holdings.....