Douglas McWilliams

CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

Fee band C £2.5K TO £5K

"Doug communicated in straightforward language the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead." ABTA

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"Doug spoke knowledgably and entertainingly."

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TOPICS

Economic Overview

SPEECH TITLES

Reading the economic indicators
Business intelligence - seeing through the mass of data

BIOGRAPHY

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Douglas is CEO of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, and one of Europe's foremost forecasters of UK and international economies. Apart from his technical skills, he is widely respected for his understanding of the implications of economic trends for business decisions.

Some of Doug's insights have been highly influential. He was amongst the first to draw attention to the importance of the rising economies in East Asia. More recent work looks at the impact on the international economy of developments in China.

At a domestic level, Douglas is the acknowledged expert on the economy of London and the prospects for the City. He has advised numerous organisations, including Siemens, Vodafone, Oracle, Transport for London, Canary Wharf Group, and The Crown Estate. He has also given formal evidence to Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament, and advises senior politicians on both front benches.

Douglas served as IBM UK Chief Economist before being appointed Chief Economic Adviser to the CBI. Prior to this he was Chairman of the Economics Forecasting Group of UNICE, the European federation of employer organisations.

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Q&A

JLA: What shape recovery do you envisage?
DM: Saxophone

JLA: What's the immediate outlook for the UK?
DM: UK political and economic cycles are out of sync. The new government has to take early fiscal action, with expansionary monetary policy. This in turn means continuing low interest rates and a weak currency.

JLA: How significant is the shift of power from West to East
DM: The share of world GDP from Europe and North America has dropped below 50% for the first time since the mid 19th century. In the East this means higher demand for natural resources, large balance of payments surpluses and large amounts of surplus funding. For us it heralds lower long-term interest rates and mixed effects for inflation.

JLA: What has changed as a result of the recession?
DM: In a corporate sense, many 'sunk' costs have been written off - so change is accelerated. On a macro level, recession has forced us to revise some basic economic models. In the West we used to believe house price inflation would do our savings for us, now we have to save real money; and Asia can no longer rely on Western consumers. In future they will have to create their own demand.

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