It's Not the Same Old Davos

Business leaders, stunned by their loss of public trust and fearful of a further backlash, vowed at the weekend to join forces more often in order to share the burden of tackling challenges from shrinking demand to climate change.
Wrapping up a week that had begun with surveys showing steep falls in chief executives’ confidence levels and trust in western businesses, industry delegates to Davos struggled to agree on a single answer to the crisis.
Prescriptions offered at a session on restoring trust in business ranged from giving audit and compensation committees more teeth to simply demonstrating competence at companies’ core businesses.
Most executives agreed that more regulation seemed inevitable, but Solomon Trujillo, chief executive of Telstra, echoed many in his call for new regulations to be limited and designed to give business incentives to invest.
Mark Parker, chief executive of Nike, urged his peers to stay focused on the consumer and on sustainable behaviour.
Industry delegates meeting at the World Economic Forum had agreed that more collaboration would be necessary, he added.
“The theme of last year’s meeting – ‘the power of collaborative innovation’ – contains many of the solutions to the theme of this year’s meeting – ‘shaping the post-crisis world’,” he said.
However, Lee McIntire, chief executive of CH2M Hill, an engineering and construction group, said: “Remember, we’re not always right at this conference.
“When I was here last year, what I kept thinking was that if I could help my customers with water, energy and sustainability, I’d do really well profit-wise. . . The world has changed a lot since the last Davos [meeting].”