Brexit day is here – but does the rest of the world even care? January 31, 2020 Today is the day that many have dreaded, many have dreamed of and a lot thought might never come. At 11pm, just as the first pubs begin to close, the United Kingdom will quietly slip out of a side door to exit the European Union, ending our membership of a club we’ve been in for [...]
Davos Diary: Day 5 January 24, 2020 So here I am, on the final day of the 2020 World Economic Forum. It seems a lifetime ago that I woke up early on Monday morning, the Alpine air fresh in my nostrils and excited for the week ahead. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of heavyweights, celebrities, insights and networks: Thunberg, Trump, Charles, [...]
Davos Diary: Day 4 January 23, 2020 Today I woke to another bright and crisp day in the Swiss Alps. My first port of call was a session with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. He was tight-lipped on the hot story of the day – the alleged hacking of Jeff Bezos’s mobile by the Saudi Crown Prince – saying he would need [...]
Davos Diary: Day 3 January 22, 2020 A late night last night at Davos, as I was invited to four events and wanted to attend them all! I finished the evening with my old friend Anthony Scaramucci, always a tonic for even the most fatigued mind, and when I eventually found my way to bed it was with a sense of a [...]
Davos Diary: Day 2 January 21, 2020 Today we hit the ground running at the World Economic Forum. It’s been a big day, with speeches by Greta Thunberg and President Trump, which is, as you would expect, the whole spectrum of opinion when it comes to climate change, sustainability and environmental concerns. They couldn’t be any more different, of course: Ms Thunberg [...]
Davos Diary: Day 1 January 20, 2020 Paul Blanchard reports from the 50th edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos
What Carlos Ghosn’s escape teaches us about reputation management January 16, 2020 Carlos Ghosn’s escape from the Japanese justice system is truly remarkable, not just because of the circumstances themselves – which really are stranger than fiction – but also because of what it tells us about owning the narrative in modern reputation management. Indeed, if there is a playbook on how to forge a favourable narrative [...]
How dinner at the Golden Globes proved the influencer model January 9, 2020 For many of us, Ricky Gervais was the real winner at the Golden Globes. As visceral and contemptuously cutting as ever, he lost no time in bludgeoning the previous pretentiousness that has blighted Hollywood’s beauty parades. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech,” he [...]
Why Davos matters in the millennial world December 20, 2019 Davos. Even the word conjures up images of Alpine glamour, exclusivity, high society and power. This week we learned that Boris Johnson has banned his ministers from attending the 2020 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town, Downing Street stressing that the new government is focusing on “delivering for the people, not champagne with billionaires”. [...]
Why the latest SALT conference is a geopolitical win for the Middle East December 13, 2019 The global business conference, which has become a regular annual feature in Las Vegas, moved its latest edition to another desert oasis...