The Center for Emerging Markets held its seventh annual symposium on Tuesday, June 7, highlighting the changing, volatile, market conditions many companies face in emerging economies.

Ravi Ramamurti, center director and Distinguished Professor of International Business and Strategy, opened the symposium with a summation of the current state of emerging markets.

Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for Massachusetts-based IHS Global Insight, and symposium keynote speaker highlighted the “perfect storm” of the 2000's market conditions that lead to the downturn and turbulent trends. This “golden decade” was often characterized by rising prices, off-shoring businesses and the decline of global interest rates, followed by a brief upswing after the global financial collapse.

Now though, he said there is a “great diver­gence in the per­for­mance of emerging mar­kets,” as some countries such as Russia and Venezuela suffer through recessions, while more positive market trends are emerging in the Middle East and other regions.

Other symposium speakers included Alberto Car­valho, pres­i­dent of Proctor & Gamble-​​Brazil; David Nar­done, DMSB'79, MBA'82, pres­i­dent and CEO of Hemaraj Land and Devel­op­ment Co. Ltd. in Thai­land; Karim Smadi, DMSB'93, man­aging director, Reda Indus­trial Mate­rials in Dubai and Stephen Hayes, president and CEO of the Cor­po­rate Council on Africa.

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