Hopes
The Water Dragon year of 2012 is about changes. The world will witness a combination of orderly change and uncertainty in the eurozone and the US. About half the countries in the world will change their government in 2012, by democratic election or otherwise. They include the US, Russia, France and China, between them representing over 40% of global economic output. 12:37 PM Feb 3, 2012

Old worries, and some good news
Logically, there is little reason to write a column on the New Year. Whether in economics, politics, peace, warfare, love or hatred, nothing changes so neatly from the end of one year to the start of the next that it merits media space. 12:30 PM Feb 3, 2012

Renewables and sustainable development
Fairly recently, the Chinese govenment laid out out its next five-year plan in which there was a strong accent on the expansion of renewable sources of energy as a component of the overall Chinese requirement for power supply in the years ahead. 7:39 AM Feb 3, 2012

Next frontier for luxury brands
Gone is the era in which the developed economies of Western Europe and North America ruled the global business landscape with their well-developed markets, massive middle-class populations, considerable levels of disposal income, well-established institutional intermediaries and continually growing economies. 7:34 AM Feb 3, 2012

Globalization and the role of cities
Around five years ago some Indonesian friends – most of them Ivy League graduates – established a private equity firm in Singapore. In the same year, they took their families to live in Singapore. Nowadays, their firm is a major private equity firm with huge investment in Indonesia. They are not alone: I have probably a dozen of friends who did the same. 7:51 PM Feb 2, 2012