Executives arriving in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum which begins in earnest today are plagued with concerns over future growth, restive shareholders and declining margins.
The banking elite are back in force, with Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, making his first appearance since 2008 and his counterparts on Wall Street and in Europe, for the most part, joining in.
Two of the most prominent promotional storefronts on a main street in the Alpine town are taken by Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, even though they are suffering the lingering after-effects of financial disaster and self-inflicted scandals. On the surface, the spirit of “resilient dynamism”, this year’s conference slogan, appears to be alive and well.