Classic Business

Wayne McCurrie, portfolio manager, FNB Wealth and Investments & Caroline Cremen, portfolio manager at Adviceworx

Leila Ebrahim, co-lead: PwC Reward, People & Organization; Andréas Horak, PwC People & Organisation Reward Co-lead & Laurence Grubb Master Reward Specialist Member of the Executive Committee South African Reward Association

The coronavirus crisis should spur the world to “wake up to long-term risks” such as climate change, collapsing asset prices and weapons of mass destruction, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Global leaders’ biggest concerns about the decade ahead are laid out in a new report by WEF, best known for organising an annual summit of leaders at the Davos ski resort in Switzerland. In 2006, the Global Risks Report sounded the alarm on pandemics and other health-related risks. That year, the report warned that a “lethal flu, its spread facilitated by global travel patterns and uncontained by insufficient warning mechanisms, would present an acute threat.” Impacts would include “severe impairment of travel, tourism and other service industries, as well as manufacturing and retail supply chains” while “global trade, investor risk appetites and consumption demand” could see longer-term harms. A year later, the report presented a pandemic scenario that illustrated, among other effects, the amplifying role of “infodemics” in exacerbating the core risk…14 years later that became a reality…

With the world more attuned to risk, what is the opportunity now in the wake of the pandemic? Michael Avery speaks to Emilio Granado Francos, the WEF’s lead author in Bern, Switzerland.

Olga Constantatos, head of credit at FutureGrowth

Lester Davids, investment strategist at Unum Capital

Kurt Moore, CEO of SALBA

Adv Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, compiler of The Section 59 interim report

Rob Towell, portfolio manager at Sasfin Securities & Imtiaz Suliman, portfolio manager at Sentio-Capital

During this pandemic few issues have stirred as much heated and emotive debate, and provided a glimpse of the ruling parties innate authoritarian tendencies, than the banning of the sale of alcohol. The industry is wilting with job losses mounting up and downstream, while doctors welcomed the extra ICU capacity, specifically over New Years. The country’s largest brewer, SAB, has cancelled a further R2,5bn in new investment and says over 165,000 people have already lost their jobs as a result of alcohol bans. Michael Avery speaks to Department of Science & Technology and National Research Foundation research chair in vaccine-preventable diseases at Wits University, Prof Shabir Madhi; Ken Forrester, one of the doyens of the local wine industry; Maurice Smithers, Chair of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance; & Bruce Jack, of Bruce Jack wines, about alternative approaches to outright bans

Ronak Gopaldas, director at Signal Risk and a fellow at The Gordon Institute of Business Science