The Economic Impact Of The New "Swine 'Flu"
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 04/30/2009
Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
Perhaps it will be as late as October before a vaccine is available against the virus.
Meanwhile, as a general precaution against ALL viruses, please turn to my Medical Blog at http://guptaramedical.blogspot.com and take the traditional Indian recipe against all 'flu type infections indicated there.
From a financial or business perspective, an interesting question is: what will be the economic impact of this 'Flu if it does develop into a full-blown pandemic?
My interlocutor suggests a fall of 1% in global GDP. This is just above the estimate from Moody’s, in a research note on Tuesday, that the global macroeconomic impact of a "mild" flu pandemic could cost 1.4m lives and reduce global gross domestic product by 0.8 per cent or $330bn.
In normal times, I would agree with those sorts of figures.
However, in the present delicate situation for the global economy...it is hard to tell if research notes such as from Moody's are of any value.
If there is indeed a pandemic which kills anything like 1.4 million people, Moody's may consider that "mild" but that could deal a blow to the effectiveness of all the current misguided governmental and inter-governmental attempts to counter the present economic crisis - efforts which have nevertheless at least so far kept the global economy from decelerating too quickly.
For all our sakes, but particularly for the sake of the poor in the world, pray hard that the virus is contained. Even a 0.8% further fall in global GDP would come hard on top of the already deplorable situation. Sphere: Related Content
Prabhu Guptara
