8 July 2011

Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

Download the full programme

Download the report of the proceedings

The CIBAM July 2011 Global Business Symposium on 'BRICS and Beyond' adventured into the unknown territory of which economies will be dominant when the pages of the future are turned to 2050! It also celebrated 15 years of collaboration with Diageo, its sponsor, and flagged up the uncanny knack of the CIBAM Board, drawn from business and academia, to pick topics for discussion which become the talking points for opinion leaders two years later

Listen to the summary Podcast part 1

Listen to the summary Podcast part 2

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, extended his warm welcome to the delegates to Cambridge and to the Symposium on 'BRICs and Beyond', and thanked the sponsor, Diageo, for making this event possible. He remarked that he receives many invitations to speak at various events, but was "particularly pleased to be here".

Dr Christos Pitelis, Director, CIBAM

Introduction

Dr Christos Pitelis, Director of the Centre for International Business and Management (CIBAM), welcomed the audience and gave a brief introduction to the Symposium. He explained the special significance of this event, which celebrated 15 years of continuing collaboration between CIBAM and Diageo, whose former CEO, Mr Jack Keenan, is CIBAM's Patron, and whose President for Europe, Mr Andrew Morgan, is a CIBAM Global Advisory Board Member and sponsor of this event.

Read more

Speaker bio

Resources

Mr John Hawksworth, Chief Economist, PricewaterhouseCoopers

The BRICs and beyond: prospects, opportunities and challenges

Panel Discussion: The Impact of the BRIC's on the West

Mr Stephen King, Group Chief Economist & Global Head of Economics and Asset Allocation Research, HSBC Bank

CIBAM Director Dr Christos Pitelis chaired the opening panel on BRICs. He introduced the first speaker, Mr Stephen King, Group Chief Economist & Global Head of Economics and Asset Allocation Research, HSBC, who spoke about the impact of the BRICs on the West. His talk drew insights from his 2010 book, Losing Control, which explains 'why the West's economic prosperity can no longer be taken for granted' and discusses the emerging threats to Western prosperity.

Dr Amrita Narlikar, Director, Centre for Rising Powers, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

Is India a responsible great power?

The next speaker was Dr Amrita Narlikar, Director of the Centre for Rising Powers, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, who discussed the rise of one of the BRIC countries - India. In her opening remarks, Dr Narlikar referred to the famous quote by Shakespeare that "some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them" and argued that India is not yet a great power, despite the attempts of others to thrust it into greatness. Importantly, she raised the question of whether India will become a responsible great power. To answer it, Dr Narlikar would provide a quick overview of India's achievements and some reasons for skepticism. She would argue that India is a very powerful 'veto-player' but still not a very powerful nation. Concerning the issue of responsibility, Dr Narlikar's talk would raise questions about India's willingness to be responsible.

Mr Michael Calvey, Managing Partner, Baring Vostok Capital Partners

Challenges and opportunities for Russian business

Next, Mr Michael Calvey, Managing Partner, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, spoke about investment opportunities in Russia. He began his presentation by looking at Russian human capital. He observed that although Russia does not have the demographic tailwind of Brazil, what we have seen in the last few years (immigration, more births), means that Russia won't have a growing population but a flat population. He highlighted the importance of education and literacy, emphasising that the quality of education in Russia is universally strong throughout the country. According to the data he showed, Russia has a very high adult literacy rate (99.4 per cent) and high enrolment (68 per cent) in post-secondary education. Mr Calvey explained that the high quality of human capital enables rapid business scalability, even as companies grow larger and become more complex.

Read more

Speaker bio

Resources

Dr Jie Wang, Executive Director, Stanford Center for Sustainable Development, and Global Competitiveness Director, Stanford Sustainable Development and Environmental Informatics

Quality of knowledge and making better decisions for Chinese enterprise leaders

The fourth speaker in the opening panel was Dr Jie Wang, Executive Director, Stanford Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness, whose presentation was entitled 'Resources and qualities of knowledge and making better decisions for Chinese enterprise leaders'.

Read more

Speaker bio

Resources

WPP's BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brazilian Brands

Mr David Roth, CEO, EMEA and Asia, The Store - WPP

Panel Chair

After lunch, WPP held the European launch of their BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brazilian Brands. Mr David Roth, CEO, EMEA and Asia, The Store - WPP, introduced the session by first explaining what BrandZ stands for. Created and funded by WPP, BrandZ is the world's largest consumer brand equity database, with 200,000 interviews conducted each year in 32 countries, in more than 30 categories and more than 6,000 brands. Mr Roth referred to BrandZ as "the bedrock" of how they express consumer and brand thinking, and he pointed to Mr Peter Walshe, Senior Director, Millward Brown, in the audience, who runs BrandZ. Mr Roth talked about the richness of data collected for the past 12-13 years, which helps WPP gain a very good understanding of how brands relate to consumers and what makes them better or poorer.

Read more

Speaker bio

Resources

Mr Eduardo Tomiya, Managing Director, Brand Analytics

Key findings of the Top 50 Most Valuable Brazilian Brands: their relation with economic development of the country

Mr Eduardo Tomiya, Managing Director, Brand Analytics, presented the key findings of the Top 50 Most Valuable Brazilian Brands.

Mr Tomiya first discussed the methodology and approach for the Brazilian rankings, launched in May this year. He explained that the model is based on (1) market research, using data from BrandZ, which included 14,800 interviews in 37 categories, analysing 460 brands, and (2) financial information from Bloomberg on the book value of each brand, as well as market capitalisation.

Mr Tomiya defined what they considered to be "a Brazilian brand", as a brand that is owned by a publicly traded enterprise, and it is either controlled by a Brazilian group or the majority of the operations of the brand is in Brazil.

He then explained that they quantified the market capitalisation of each brand and the book value, and that the difference between the two is intangibles. To give one an idea of the importance of managing intangibles, he noted, that the sum of all intangibles from the top 50 Brazilian brands is 55 per cent of total market capitalisation. From the intangible value, part is exclusively associated with brands. For example, Mr Tomiya looked at the brand contribution of the main communication providers in Brazil, for some of which (such and NET, a cable TV provider) it is as much as 20 per cent.

Next, Mr Tomiya presented a video with a countdown of the Top 50 Brazilian brands. He announced that the most valuable Brazilian brand is oil and gas giant Petrobras, and runners up are Itaú and Bradesco. Petrobras's brand value alone is at USD13.4b. Importantly, the value of top 50 Brazilian brands has gone up 55 per cent on last year, compared to the 17 per cent combined value increase on last year of the top 100 global brands, noted by Mr Roth. Moreover, the composition has changed - whereas in 2008 financial institutions represented more than 50 per cent of total brand value, in 2010 this figure is 36 per cent. Looking at the substantial growth of total brand value between 2008-2010 in B2B, retail, and food, beverages and cosmetics, Mr Tomiya concluded that the increase in the importance of brands in Brazil is for all segments.

Read more

Speaker bio

Resources

Listen to the Podcast

Listen to the Podcast