A new year; a new agenda

AT THE beginning of this century, business leaders were heroes and their future was bright. They could reasonably assume that the momentum for a more open world economy would continue, with more trade liberalisation, more deregulation, and more privatising of state-owned companies. But, in a short space of time, their world turned upside down. The economic expansion of the late 1990s came to an abrupt end; much more significantly, the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 ushered in a new era of geopolitical tension. At the same time, corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom revealed serious cracks in the foundations of corporate governance.