World Economic Forum could herald resurgence of family business values

The 40th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum begins next week and could signal a resurgence in the popularity of the values on which many family businesses are based.
 
The theme of this year's annual meeting is "Improve the state of the world: rethink, redesign, rebuild". The founder and executive chairman of the forum, Klaus Schwab, said: "We have to rethink our values – we are living together in a global society with many different cultures.
 
"We have to look at the meeting in the context of what's happening in the world and we see that clearly the present situation of global cooperation is not working sufficiently. So we want to look at all the issues on the global agenda in a systemic, integrated and strategic way, and we want to address in particular the issues in global cooperation," he explained.
 
Family leaders clearly support the return to a more values-based global system as many are attending the conference next week. High-profile attendees include Mukesh Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal, Ferdinand Piech, Guler Sabianci and Akio Toyoda.
 
The forum runs from 27-31 January in Davos, Switzerland and expects to welcome 2,500 leaders in business, government and civil society from around the world.  www.campdenFB.com will be covering the event so make sure you check back regularly to keep up-to-date with all the developments of relevance to family businesses.

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