Cayman business community to look in to future

(CNS): Hundreds of people from the offshore sector will be looking into the future of the financial world tomorrow when the industry players and pundits gather at the Ritz Carlton for the annual Cayman Business Outlook conference. Premier McKeeva Bush will open the conference before financial experts offer their insight into the industry’s, and in particular, Cayman’s future. In the afternoon the police commissioner, the auditor general and a local pastor will join with local finance experts to pitch in on a panel discussion covering crime & politics as well as future jobs & prosperity in Cayman.

Experts say that the coming decade is going to be characterized by much less financial leverage, much more government regulation, slow job growth and a shift away from US consumption as the global engine of growth. Speakers at this year’s CBO will be examining questions such as what will the post recession business, geopolitical and economic landscape look like? What do individual, companies and nations need to do to boost productivity, fuel growth and squeeze out a profit in this restructured world order?

The Chairman & CEO of the main sponsors, Fidelity, Anwer Sunderji promises guests that they will be informed, educated and provoked as they examine the marked impact that recent global financial events have had on the world’s economy.

“Toxic assets on banks’ balance sheets, high levels of credit card debt, collapsed home values and sharply eroded pension assets, will shackle theUS economy, and much of the developed world, for years to come,” Sunderji said. “This will have a profound impact on the rest of the developing world and particularly smaller Caribbean based economies dependent on the US economic engine. Having dodged the Great Depression, and endured the Great Recession for a limited time, we are now in a period where the dismantling of the Great Credit Boom of the 90’s is underway with aggressive deleveraging taking place as consumers and banks repair their balance sheets.”

He said the world was unlikely to see a great recovery as consumers in the developed economies the US in particular, appear unwilling to, or simply cannot, revert to their debt fuelled spending habits that underpinned global economic prosperity in the last decade. “Such a dramatic reduction in consumer spending in the US will result in an extended period of slow to moderate growth, which will be the basis for the “New Normal” – a culture of thrift and an age of austerity,” he added.

The CBO 2010 presenters have all made frequent appearances on financial channels and news programmes and are regular print and web columnists. Keynote speaker, Simon Johnson, one of the world’s foremostauthorities on the financial sector and economic crises and a former International Monetary Fund chief economist while give his presentation, Grave new world at 10:25

Registration is at 8:00am and the conference takes place on Thursday 21 January at the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman.