Thursday, April 23, 2009

Blankfein: "21st century belongs to Bric nations" (GS)

From Livemint (India):

In a free-wheeling interview, Lloyd Craig Blankfein, CEO and chairman Goldman Sachs, spoke about the issues before Wall Street and the group’s plan for emerging markets, including India
...Even in a time of lower growth, emerging markets are showing higher growth than developed markets. We are trying to disproportionately grow our footprints in emerging markets and, of course, that includes India.

So, your perception about Bric economies has not changed?
Not, not at all. I think the 21st century is the century of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India & China) like the 20th century was the century of America. People used to say that 20th century was the American century. But there was a tremendous financial cataclysm in the early part of that century. There was panic in 1907; during the 1930s and there were also two world wars. There were crises and the growth was never a straight line.

Our Brics report did not contemplate that there will be growth, growth and growth every year without any interruption. Indeed, we are surprised by the magnitude of events in 2008 and 2009 but we are not surprised that something has happened. We did not know what it was going to be and what direction it would come from but just because there is an economic crisis in 2008, we are not getting out of BRICs and miss out on the next 92 years....MORE