I hope for more Bollywood films to be shot in Wales: Welsh Minister

Addressing an audience of 200 business delegates at the second annual full day IIM Global Management summit in London on October 4, 2007, Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy First Minister for Wales and minister for Economy & Transport, along with his team from International Business Wales announced that a trade mission from his country would be visiting India in November 2007. Wyn Jones said that this was an ideal way for business in Wales to find new partners and customers and develop cultural links between the two countries. He said Wales was a small but smart country with a "will do" attitude that offered potentail partners, good infrastructure, good workforce, stable economy and low interest rates - adding he hoped to see more Bollywood films being shot in his country.

The IIM Global Management Summit - The Changing Face of Business - was held at New Connaught Rooms by the Europe Chapter of Alumni Association of the six Indian Institutes of Management. The Summit was attended by over 200 delegates from the business, political and academic worlds.

Opening the summit earlier, Mehmood Khan, chairman of IIM Alumni Association Europe, said the event was an opportunity to stimulate business discussion and global networking, and to promote the global brand of the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), India’s world class b-schools from where around 100 MBA graduates are being directly recruited into the City of London every year.

The Summit heard from 35 keynote speakers and industry specialists, and held panel discussions in several areas. Harpal Randhawa, Founder of Sabre Capital worldwide pointed that global companies from emerging markets are successful due to their superior execution and new industry models rather than cheap labour, giving examples of companies ranging from Posco in Korea and Yue Yuen in Taiwan to Embraer in Brazil and Tenaris in Argentina. He surprised the audience by asserting that the next global cement giant is in the making in Nigeria, a place which the world assumes is still too risky for business.

Several other speakers focused on key innovations and growth areas. Amjid Ali, Head of HSBC Amanah UK, explained the global potential and policies behind Islamic Banking.  Martin Kochman, Head of Europe BPO at Cognizant gave examples of clinical trial, equity research and fund accounting as future areas of smaller-scale higher-value processes that will be outsourced.

The conference spanned business areas of current interest. Underscoring the business challenges of climate change, Mark Purdy, Policy & Corporate Affairs, Accenture, presented some key findings of his forthcoming research report. The research interviewed management at 500 companies of various sizes across six countries, and identified that although over 45% of them see it as a major issue for business, fewer than 20% have made it their strategic priority.

Professor David Begg, Principal Imperial College London however pointed out that action on climate change is not straightforward because it requires not only a compromise between poor and rich nations, but also between current and future generations. As future generations will be richer and will have better technology to deal with these problems, he said, so we should not be making poor people poorer today just to make the rich richer tomorrow.

Bob Gogel, Group CEO of Liberata, challenged the audience to balance corporate social responsibility with shareholder value maximization; while Joel Perlman of Copal Partners, an equity research KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) company, had some surprising news when he said it is cheaper to have Western senior management expats in India than senior local recruits because of the insatiable demand for talent in the rapidly growing Indian market.

Mark Berrisford-Smith, Senior Economist at HSBC Bank plc had some positive news to give saying that while the US economy will see a slowdown in 2008, yet a full blown recession was unlikely.

Talking about “Distributed Innovation”, Prof. Gerry George, Head of Rajiv Gandhi Centure at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, emphasized the special relationship with IIMs. Giving examples of the Guggenheim museum, Heathrow Terminal 5, and City Hall design process, he emphasized that global partnerships are likely to drive value innovation in the future.

Clifford De Souza, Partner at Emerging Markets Group, identified systemic factors at the root of the ongoing US sub-prime crisis predicting further financial innovations will emerge for better risk transfer.

Other key speakers included A. S. Lakshminarayanan, Country Head of Tata Consultancy Services, UK & Ireland; Nish Kotecha of Sphere Partners and President TiE UK; Uday Dandvate, CEO SonicRim, Ltd; and Pradeep Banerji, CTO of the Sword group.

Lauding the efforts of their Europe alumni, Dr. Devi Singh, Director of Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, pledged greater support from all six IIMs for future events. The IIM Alumni Association Europe announced they will hold more business and cultural events in London in 2008 to further build their network and promote the IIM brand.