 Well, good morning everyone. We have 45 minutes to redo the world. So thank you first of all to our panelists for being here. So we're trying to talk about the risk of a recession in 2023 continuing to loom over major economies. We'll discuss over the next 45 minutes on how maybe some of these recessions can be abated, what kind of things we can do to make it better. There was growing consensus that we're really at a defining moment in the global economy and with the major trends transforming our economies, maybe could change course, maybe not. Yesterday we had a pretty discouraging survey and the Web's annual meeting began with corporate executives an economist warning of a worldwide recession this year and this is a Pricewaterhouse Cooper survey finding that 73% of 4,410 business leaders predicted global growth will decline over the coming 12 months. The worst insipole began in 2011. So that's our framing. Remember everyone you can do hashtag with 23 if you want to post on social media or ask questions and then there's Slido. Slido will be your best friend because if you look at that QR code you can then send questions and I will weave of course all the questions that you have for a wonderful panelists and I will ask them as many questions as I can. So I am delighted to be joined on the panel by Mario Centeno, governor of central bank of Portugal, Laura Cha, chairman Hong Kong exchange and clearing of Hong Kong SAR, Axel Lehmann, chairman of the board of directors Credit Suisse and Douglas Peterson, president chief executive officer of S&P Global. So thank you all for joining us. Axel, let me kick it off with you. When you look at the global recession, when you look at some of the huge worries that we have across the world, can we avoid a recession in certain parts of the world and what does this all mean for Europe? Well, of course, there are a lot of reasons to get worried. We have war still in Europe, will be discussed in doubles. You have energy crisis, we have inflation, but I think, no, I think the world is probably fundamentally changing and we are entering into, I will call it a multipolar world. So it's not a global recession, not you need to look to the various parts to the east and the west. Hopefully the US can avoid a recession. I know there are a lot of voices that say it will be or not. Europe, I trust we will talk about it. It's much more challenging in particular also for the energy situation. But when I look in particular to China, China is reopening and what have we seen when the western world was reopening? Forecasts were that and real growth was that. So I think when the growth forecast now for China is four and a half, I would not personally be surprised when that would be top. We have, I think, you just look to the fundamentals of growth, its population, you look to population growth, aging of the population in China versus what is happening in India. There's a huge growth coming out of India. So I think there's a lot of hope. And then secondly, what we also will see and that is unprecedented, uncharted territory. You know, for many, many years, interest rates are coming down. Now we have inflation, inflation is coming higher and the trust will talk about it. Risk free rate will go positive and that has some good impact on savers, but that has some real challenging impact on corporates. So, Laura, how do you see China, first of all reopening? And one of the pitfalls or dangers is that when China reopens very quickly, then commodity prices go up because there's so much more demand coming up, inflation goes up. And that's again quite a difficult time for the world economy. Well, I think if we look at the key event this year so far, definitely the reopening of China has to be the major event and it will be a key driver for growth. I think the survey came out instead, it's 3.5 to 4.5 percent. And as XO said, it might top that. But in any event, it's positive growth. And I think the lockdown over the last three years has created pent up demand domestically. So I would see increased domestic consumption and of course the manufacturing sector will pick up. All those will be good factors for the global growth. And then at the same time, you know, the commodity prices may go up, they may drive inflation, but I think the world will, as we develop, will find its equilibrium. In other words, I think Asia is where the growth factor will be. You know, not only China, India, Indonesia, these are all emerging and very strong economies. So I believe that Asia's portion of the world GDP, which was 20 percent in 2010, 35 percent in 2020, and it's going to be 45 percent in 2027. This is according to the IMF survey. So there's a lot of hope. There's a recession, I think in some part of the world cannot be avoided, but the area of growth is really China and Asia. Douglas, how do you see this from a global perspective? And I want to come back also, what kind of reopening you're seeing in China, whether it's stop and start or whether it's, you know, trend that continues. But what do you see? We see that there is likely to be a very mild recession in the first half of the U.S. in Europe and in the U.K. But when you look at the full year impact, it should be very mild in terms of total growth. As Laura just said, there should be strong growth in Asia. China's ability to reenergize their economy after having two years of total lockdown. There's pent up savings. There's pent up demand. So we think that China will see very strong growth, especially as you get later in the year. There's a couple of really important factors we're watching, clearly interest rates. There's a resetting of the mindset of interest rates. We went through 10 years, 10 plus years of basically zero negative interest rates around the world, and we're seeing a reset into what used to seem like low rates, 3, 4 percent, and now those seeming high, but the markets will have to reset to a new level of rates. And then there's clearly other important issues, environment, how we're going to be seeing energy transition, environmental change starting to come into markets, new factors which will be impacting markets in the future. But to your question right now, we expect there will be slowdown and light recession in the EU, EU, UK, and the US, but strong growth around the rest of the world as it rebounds. So net net growth globally this year. Marie Centeno, how do you see a recession or not in Europe? Shallow or profound? Well, I won't change the mood. I also think that the economy has been surprising us quarter after quarter. The fourth quarter in Europe will be most likely still positive. Maybe we will be surprised also in the first half of the year, but we also see a pick up through 2023. The slowdown is all too natural. We recovered from COVID. We have a war in Europe. Sometimes we don't recall ourselves from that. And we have an energy crisis that eat Europe quite hard. Contrary for example to the US, we are much more exposed to the energy crisis than other parts of the world. So with all these ingredients, the growth even if low that we see in Europe is kind of reassuring. What worries me the most are the confidence levels. We didn't recover yet at all from the shock of February last year. Contrary to COVID, this has taken a much longer time. It is eating investment a little bit. The labour market is very, very strong. It's the biggest pillar of our economy these days. So if we can change this sentiment around businesses and families with all the pent up savings and demands that Doug also mentioned, I think we are adding to something that will not go to negative territory. I'm going to do a quick poll actually for those listening. Who thinks the panel is a little bit too optimistic? Raise your hand. Too pessimistic? Raise your hand. You're getting your tone quite right. By worry, Marie Centeno, is that central banks are trying to do something which is lower inflation. And we hear time and time again that it could come down quite quickly, we could have reached peak inflation from 9% to 6%. If we're going to reach that 2% target, are central banks going to put us in a recession willingly to make sure that inflation doesn't get out of control again? Well, inflation usually it comes down quickly when we are at that stage. Maybe we are beginning that in Europe. In the US we see much more figures that can tell us that gas inflation is coming down. I won't subscribe to the idea that it will be central banks that will start the recession because inflation is also not good for our economy. That's why we find it. So the trade off really sometimes does not exist. So we will continue to fight inflation because that's our mandate. I am confident that given what is happening with international prices, energy costs today are much lower than a year ago. Most commodity prices are also year on year negative. We don't have signs of second round effect in Europe. The labor market, even if very tight, it is performing amazingly well without very significant pressures on wages. So we again can help on that. And the normalization of monetary policy was really needed in Europe. We had to get rid of the negative rates. We must also create scope for interventions if we have to in the near future. So I think we are in a comfortable process. My question was a bit harsher. It's your job. You have one job to keep inflation. So it wasn't like you're intending to put the world in a recession. But how much do you worry about this adjustment? The end of cheap money and the fact that actually if we don't see a recession it's going to be tough for many people. It's that kind of growth that is uneasy, that will sit uneasy with central cash. Look, I'm with you. I hope we can really, let's say globally, somewhat avoid recession. But ultimately there are fundamental changes. I was speaking about when interest rates go up, risk-free rate goes up. Let's not forget that it's good for savers. So people that couldn't save can save again. So global inequality might get balanced. We saw last year when you look to the super-rich of this world, most of them have lost on their net assets due to the asset inflation that is coming down. You see then what is happening else. It's the readjustment of the economy. So a lot of countries in particular in Europe, but basically globally, need to increase their defense budget. That is sucking up resources when costs of capital go higher. Profit margins will get under pressure. So we might be up in that new multipolar world where we still have growth, but not that great. So it's not a question for me about short-term recession is the outlook for the next three, four, five years, where we probably have a little bit subdued growth. Interest rates getting up, cost of capital are higher, rebalancing of global imbalances. Yes, on one hand, that's when you look to aggregate data. But in situations like that, innovation is so key. And I think we need to disaggregate the data. And there are certainly sectors where you can grow or even can outgrow energy, healthcare, and others. So I think it's a time for true entrepreneurs these days. Douglas? Yeah, also a couple of points. First on the question about central banks, we expect that rates still need to go up. We're not a point yet where we think that the rates have gone up high enough and fast enough. In the EU, rates are still quite low, 2%. In the U.S., it's 4.5 to 5%. It should go up a little bit more, maybe another 75 basis points or 100 basis points, so that we believe that the rates will continue to go up central bank rates. But let me shift to maybe some of the positive factors as opposed to saying, will there be recession? Why won't it be as bad as it could have been? We talked a little bit about labor markets. Labor markets are very strong, which is a little bit odd to be talking about recession when you have zero unemployment rates around the world. In the U.S., there's more people, more jobs open than are people looking for jobs. And I don't see that change anytime soon. We're coming into a potential recession when consumers have pretty strong balance sheets. Even the bottom quartile has much stronger balance sheets than they did pre-pandemic. And then the corporate sector globally, especially the investment-grade corporate sector, is very strong. They raised a lot of liquidity before the pandemic into the pandemic. They've been quite cautious about their keeping a strong capital structure in their businesses, strong cash flow. And then the banking sector is particularly strong. If you go back 10, 15 years ago, we had the great financial crisis, the banking sector, there was contagion in the banking sector. This was a serious part of the financial crisis. Now the banking sector has gone through a true stress test with the pandemic. The regulatory regime globally is quite strict. We've had now 10 years of stress testing, of sea cars, the banks themselves. So I don't see the banks becoming a source of problems going into the recession. We just saw last week that the large U.S. banks all issued their earnings reports for the fourth quarter in the outlooks. They did, most of them predicted, some sort of a light recession. They also increased their loan loss reserve. But there was not one question about the viability of any of those issues. The banks are very strong, which I think bodes for, yes, some sort of recession shallow, but a lot of strength around it. Yeah, a lot of the banks also announced big job cuts and, you know, they're definitely expecting some kind of slowdown. Are you, Lauren, then I'll ask the same question to everyone, actually. Are you surprised by the resilience of businesses in your region, but even across the world? Is it normal that after we've had such interest rate adjustments, we're not seeing more companies going under? Well, I think it's not surprising for us in Asia. As I said earlier, because of the vibrant economy growing in the region, not only China opening up, but India has done tremendously well in Indonesia and the ASEAN countries as well. Our market in Hong Kong has seen the resilience, definitely. We had, you know, 2022 was a challenging year for everyone. And we saw liquidity coming back. And that's always a good sign. I think the investor sentiment is improving. They're looking into 2023, maybe with the recession in mind, but still the investability of some of the corporates are coming back. And investors are always looking for growth. When we see increased liquidity, that means increased sentiment more on the positive side. So for our second, for the Hong Kong market, our first half of 2022 was not good. And the second half almost doubled that of the first half. And in December in particular, we have seen gradual return of positive investment attitude towards China. And I think that was in anticipation of the opening up. And I think that has to be a key improvement for us. Mario, were you surprised, I guess, about the resilience of a lot of these businesses given the 12 months that we've had? Well, given the size of the shocks, it's hard not to say that we were a little bit surprised. But let's get back one step and see how we were prepared or not to face this sort of crisis. And especially in Europe, we're talking more on Europe and an example in Europe, Portugal. We were much, much better prepared this time for the sort of crisis that we faced than in 2008 or 2011 in Portugal with the sovereign debt crisis. The deleveraging process was quite effective. Risk reduction was kind of across the board. Businesses were much less in debt. The numbers for Portugal are quite telling. In 2022, businesses are less in debt than in 2019. They actually accumulated more buffers, more savings than debt during this period. So, yes, I will say that we have the instruments, both within businesses and also politically, the economic policy in Europe is a source of stability today. Contrary to what happened in the past, no one worries about fragmentation in Europe. The euro area is much stronger today, much better instruments, the institutions that we set up during pre-Covid and during COVID were quite, quite important. It's not very often mentioned, but the issuance of common debt by the European Commission is one of the greatest lip of integration in Europe. And this is part of Europe today. So, I am very positive in the sense that the signs that we send to the businesses from the policy area are much stronger than before. We don't show signs of anxiety, which is great. We learned our lessons. We are much more positive in that sense. And businesses have responded quite positively. The economy is still growing a bit. I already mentioned that the environment is very, very difficult for Europe. But I think we are on course. I'm getting some great questions also from Slido. So, please keep on sending those questions through. Axel, what are you seeing amongst your clients? So, what are they telling us? I know Credit Suisse has also another set of issues. But overall, are people confident about the future? Are they investing real estate, mortgages are going up? And this is a great question after a potential recession this year. When does it rebound? No, I think when you look to the entrepreneurial side, corporates, and then also high networks, there's still a lot to invest. They obviously last year went back a little bit more to cash, but everybody is really looking what and where to invest. And that's what I tried to say. There are huge opportunities out. And this is a time where also innovation, we will see happening innovation. And we need to focus very much on the innovation agenda. On the shorter term, sure, we hopefully can avoid the recession. But that's a shake off of the economy. Supply chains are going to change. So, ultimately, that means costs go probably a little bit higher. But how quick you can adjust and how the way you can do it is really important. What are the future technologies that will improve economic growth going forward? So, I think the smartest people looking for opportunities, where to invest and how to invest and look for ultimate for growth. And if you look, Douglas, at the energy complex and the mild winter that we had, frankly, that's helped a lot. Yeah, oh, that's been a huge positive. It's an offsetting factor to some of the risk, especially in Europe. But following up a little bit on where the investments are for innovation and the demand for capital that's coming through, you mentioned energy. The energy complex is going through a transition that there's a lot of demand for battery, for net grids, for all types of different approaches. In the U.S., there's going to be a large investment in chips. And there's this theme of reshoring, near-shoring, off-shoring, friend-shoring, et cetera. We think there will be a big shift of where capital is deployed. Last year was one of the weakest years for M&A, which is one of the reasons you saw some of the, in the U.S. and some of the other banks going for the downsizing. And so we see this year there should be some sort of recovery in M&A. So there's not a lot, a lack of capital. It's more of the uncertainty is putting the capital on the sidelines. So Laura mentioned liquidity. We think that there's ample liquidity, but it's on the sidelines waiting to see where interest rates settle, what are the growth rates, what's going to happen with energy. So it's not a lack of capital, it's a lack of certainty. Laura, can you talk to us about how you're expecting the China reopening to pan out in terms of timeline, how bumpy it will be, and what we can expect in the next quarters? I think the first and foremost is that with the opening of the borders, there will be more tourists coming out. The Chinese have always been composing a big, large number of tourists. Certainly in Asia, everybody is waiting for the Chinese to come and Hong Kong, no exception. So that will stimulate the consumption aspect. Within China itself, I think the manufacturing sector would have to pick up. There will be, and it has been because of the disruption in supply chain, there might be some adjustment. But I think the bright spot in China is really the innovation part in technology, in healthcare. Hong Kong stock exchange, for example, we are now in a short period of three, four years, we have become the second largest fundraising centre in the world for healthcare companies. And a large number of these are from the mainland. And the investors have a big appetite. And of course, AI and other technology, exactly because of the chip situation, they will spur more domestic research and development, and that will create more demand. So I think how do I see the trajectory? I'm not sure whether it will be completely smooth, but definitely it's in the right direction. And I think China, given the size of the economy, once it pick up, it's going to be very fast. We have seen it in past experience. Either they don't do it, if they made up their mind and they want to do it, I think the speed is something that will surprise us. Do you think that it will follow a similar pattern of what we saw in Western economies of goods first and then service spending? Yes, I think so. Yes, I think goods and service, I think basically is the consumption, the domestic demand. I want to move on. We have a great question about actually how stakeholders can advance some of the things that are important to our societies. But first, given we completely misread and misinterpreted a lot of the economies and inflation in the last 18 months, could I each ask you to maybe explain some of the data points? So when you look at the economy and given the predictions, what do you look at to be sure that you're looking at the right thing? Because we've had so many shocks that sometimes we didn't see inflation coming and then it was a supply shock, but it was also something a little bit more underlying. Mario. Well, if we are to pick correctly the speed of the recovery, I think we need to look at soft data such as confidence indicators because they usually are quite helpful to understand the macro cycles, but we didn't see much there yet. So that will be the theme. On the opposite side, to build self-confidence, it's the labor market. We have to be very careful when we look at the labor market signs because this is the biggest pillar of all. Let me pick a little bit on this idea of ensuring and offshoring and the idea of recovery on Asia. We are redesigning globalization. I don't believe in the globalization. I rather prefer the name re-globalization because we are setting up again hundreds of millions of interactions in the global economy. And I really hope that this time we can make it in a more inclusive way. We are at the World Economic Forum. In the qualities in the world are very important. I think we must really take the opportunity this time as we rebuild globalization to make it in a more sustainable way, also in a more inclusive way. I would rather prefer to see growth spread across the globe than looking at, for example, cost factors and be very greedy about the short term instead of spreading the goods of globalization around the world. What does that look like? So concretely, is it redistribution of wealth? We have not done enough yet. We need to do more. We need to focus on broader perspectives instead of just we recovered from COVID. The levels of economies are already at the pre-COVID level or above, but the economies are not the same. The composition of our economies are not the same. So we really need to take the next step with a broader perspective in mind, not self-focusing on what is going on in our closest neighborhood. Are we underestimating actually the profound change that a lot of the economies are going through partly due to interest rates, but also partly these changes in the economy? I believe at least partially underestimated. I really believe it's some of the fundamental shift, what I said, energy costs. Europe will have the highest average energy cost globally. That has an impact on competitiveness, not in the first half of this year, maybe not in the first second half of this year, but for the next 5 or 10 years to come. Then income inequality when interest rates go up, hopefully in some countries, we will see somewhat rebalancing. We all depend. We were asking for economic indicators. I think even more important is the geopolitical situation. I mean, the world will develop depending on what is happening. Russia, Ukraine, in the Middle East, China, Taiwan, whatever can happen, we all still read the lips of central bankers. They blink a little bit with the eye and then you get depressed or you get optimistic. But it tells you how fragile the overall is. And then, you know, we said supply chains will get adjusted. We will have a multi-polar world. So not everybody will move in the same pattern. China will be different. India will come Middle East. That's a huge growth support. It will be a center of growth. It's the energy center. And when you look what's happening there, people really look to craft their strategy for the next 50 years. It's unbelievable the change that is taking place. So I really believe we will see a reconfiguration of the economic growth patterns. And that is the real topic rather than the shorter-term impact on this year. You asked the question about what sort of indicators would we be looking at. And there's the traditional indicators that are just traditional growth of economic growth, what's happening with interest rates, what we see in different sectors. There's the other leading indicators like PMI and looking at electric consumption, et cetera, what you see around economies. The two factors which have been not consistent with the recession. The first one is what's been happening with the labor markets. Strong labor markets are not consistent with what we see with the recession. And the labor markets are strong almost everywhere in the world. China's labor market has been quite weak. We've seen reports of unemployment levels as high as 18 percent of youth unemployment. But once the economy starts opening up and fast food and services open up again, that should absorb that type of youth unemployment quite quickly. So unemployment levels are not consistent. And then the other is what we watch with markets. What do markets believe? And we've seen incredible volatility. Last year there were more days of the VIX over 20 than there ever had been in the past. So the volatility makes it harder to read what the markets are thinking. Although right now we do see that the spread in the U.S. between the 10-year and the two-year is very negative, which could actually portend to recession. That's what the market typically thinks when you're seeing that. But on the other hand, the 10-year has gotten so low it's actually bringing back credit to the market. People are issuing again. They're starting to invest again because the 10-year has gotten so low. So there's a lot of conflicting factors that we normally watch and they're not all going the same direction. I mean, so I'm not a labor economist, but there's a lot of studies saying that partly it could be long COVID people dropping out of the workforce. So not even looking for a job anymore, it could also be explained with a skill shortage. So are we too optimistic about the kind of jobs, the quality jobs that we are or not creating? Well, it's partially that there is a shift in the types of jobs. So there is some of that. The labor participation rate has dropped. So that is part of the explanation. But let me give you a structural question for the U.S. economy again where I'm coming from. And that is that if we want to have a huge investment in semiconductors, if we want to invest in the energy transition, which is coming, do we have skilled labor for pipe fitters, machinists? People are going to be able to do that kind of construction. I don't know if we do in the United States. So that labor pressure could continue and we could see the need for a much more comprehensive immigration reform to bring in the kind of skills we need. So it's not just technology skills and stem skills. We're also going to be seeing the need for basic manufacturing and skilled labor. Lorecha, to Axel's points, do you see a shifting of the economies of the center of gravity actually shifting maybe from the West elsewhere? I definitely see that as Asia's growth engine performing. I think that will counterbalance some of the recessionary pressure elsewhere. As a market operator, the data point that we have is one, the companies that are on the way to market, we have, on the Hong Kong Star Exchange, we have a strong pipeline. We have over 100 companies lining up to want to go to market. The second data point is the liquidity. We see liquidity coming back. So both on the demand and the supply side, these are very positive signs. And on the re-globalization, I think it is very important to remember that if we call it, however we want to call it, globalization is not going away, but it's being reshaped, being reimagined, being however we want to say, it is very important to be connected. And I think in Hong Kong, we pride ourselves in being the connector. We connect China with the world. We connect today with tomorrow with the new companies. And I think that's very much so in Asia as a whole. It's that the younger generation, the population is a young one in Asia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam. A lot of the Asian countries have, while China has aging population, Japan has aging population. The rest of Asia has a very young, growing one. And that has to be a very positive source. I also have a question on the African continent, which we'll get to a second, but Mario. So this is a great question from Slido, from someone in the audience. So how can public and private stakeholders advance financial literacy, but also anything else really to try and mitigate the risks that we're facing? Like, how can we work together more concretely? Well, that's a very good question, indeed. And very hard to answer in concrete, in such a short period of time. But we can look out there and use all the instruments we have in policy terms in Europe, in the US globally, to promote growth in other parts of the world as well. That will help alleviating the pressure on prices as well, on fixing the supply chains. We don't need to undo all that COVID did to us, but to construct something something more sustainable. We cannot forget about climate change that we need really to tackle. And the only way to do this is to reduce the pressure on specific areas of the globe that are today already overcrowded. That's my point. And we have the instruments. We have the development banks. We have funds that can be directed to that. We have, of course, the private sector that needs to also give an answer to this global challenge, which is not specific of a given jurisdiction in the world. Let me pick up very, very quickly on the labor market issue, because it really is key. And just to say that in contrast with what happened in the US, in Europe, we did not destroy as many jobs as the US did during COVID. That made our recovery much simpler in some sense in Europe. We did not have the pressure to rehire millions and millions of workers in the European labor market. That reduced very much the pressure on wages. And we were very successful at doing that in Europe this time around. So usually, Europe is much more stable across the cycle. This time, we got it better, I guess. Yes, usually, it's more difficult for Europe. It is, because Europeans often do not really believe on their own strengths. I think in terms of private-private partnership, I think education, training, upskilling will be a key, key theme even for the global economy. US, you have migration, but you don't get the specialists you need for technology jobs and others. I look to Switzerland. Switzerland has, for the last 20 years, basically, a population growth of nearly 1% of the population. This year, 2%. We have labor shortages in terms of engineers, software engineers, some financial specialists, healthcare partners. So we have a lot of people that want to work, but not the right skill sets. So it's not only done in looking for more migration. It's not only done in Europe. Most people are used to retire between 60-65. One day, we will all be used to retire with 70-75 or whatever. But that's not yet done. It's really the constant risk-killing. And that's, I think, a big, big opportunity. It starts at kindergarten. It ends when you're close to retirement age. That constant partnership, I think it's a key theme to make sure we can avoid more inequality, bring people into the labor market, because people in the labor market, they are integrated. They are engaging in society. And I think that's, I think, a great theme. But this is what politicians or leaders have to focus on. And again, a problem with Timeline is that this takes 10, 20 years, but politicians get reelected every couple of years. So maybe they want a quick fix. Yeah, but you know, there are examples in Switzerland. We have that apprenticeship system. That's why we fare quite well with the workforce. We have, we see that partially happening in the US. We see that partially happening in Germany. I mean, there are some models that can be used. And with you, this is not something that can you do from one day to the other. It's five, 10 years. It's 15 years. But that's a big, public, private, I think, thought-leadership activities that need to happen. Douglas, who do you see as the post, if not recession post, slowdown winners in all of this, either by country or companies or industries? Well, first of all, we talked about Asia and Asia's growth and Asia's opportunity. I would add an element of the demographic dividend. What countries still have young populations? Where will you see the natural growth coming? And will those countries and nations have the ability to educate and move the populations into the new areas? We haven't talked a lot about climate change and energy transition and what we're seeing in the financial markets, but those that are able to move fast to think about energy transition, get ahead in terms of how they look at moving into new types of energy, the energy grid, et cetera. So I think that those will be very important factors. There's another factor which, coming back to the US, which we've always seen the resilience of the US and the entrepreneurial spirit, even things like the tax code help that. You can write off something very quickly so people are willing to take risk. They're willing to fail fast. And I think bringing this type of a mindset to different countries around the world will also be beneficial. So I do think that we will see the winners will be those countries that are resilient, that have education systems that can adapt to a future market where supply chains are going to be changing. Let me just mention two seconds about Africa. I was going to ask you if this was a decade for Africa. Africa does have those benefits of the demographic dividend as well as the types of minerals that are going to be necessary for the energy transition as well as some of the conditions for producing some of the new energy sources. So Africa has a lot of opportunity to play a much bigger role in the world. Laura, when you look at the post-recession or post-lowdown winners, who do you think they are and can other corporations or can other regions emulate what they're doing to be in a better place? Well, I think the winners will be the innovators. Not by that, I don't mean only the new economy company but some of the old economy company, they have innovation as well. I think that's very important in terms of the mindset, in terms of training the next generation of the engineer in the workforce, basically upskilling the workforce. Those will be the winner. And healthcare and technology, definitely. And ESG leaders, I think those are the three areas that I would see as winners. Who do you see as winners? Yeah, I agree. I agree with what Laura said and also on the education dimension. I think if we have to bet on something that is pro-development, it will be education. I can give you very quickly again and publicize here the number for Portugal because they really mean a true transition in education terms for my country in the last 20 years. It will still take further 20 years because we start the century with very low level of education. Only 40 percent of young people graduating from high school. Now it's 85 percent. We are on the top of the numbers for the Euro area. This is a true transition and this is what we need to the future. The same thing is true for Africa. I think there's a massive need for education in Africa. We need to invest in that. It is a global issue. It's not an African issue. I think it's very, very important for all of us to understand that. Okay, I have one minute each for each of you. What is the one thing that we're, even if we're positive, we could be underestimating? Is there a challenge for a lot of the leaders listening to us and watching at home and on TV? What's the one thing that we could, if not getting wrong, certainly underestimating how challenging it is to overcome? Well, one thing that I haven't talked about yet from one of the internal views from S&P Global is the credit risk in the markets. I talked about some of the positive aspects of it but over the last 10 years there's been a lot of issuance of high yield debt in the corporate sector and we don't know what's the behavior going to be of that once we see the resetting of interest rates, when those companies have to come back to the market to renew their debt, when they have maturities, as well as many of those types of companies or industries that will be more negatively impacted by the recession. So is there a question mark? Is there some sort of a debt bubble in some parts of the economies? That would be one of my questions. Yeah, Laura, what are we underestimating? I think the geopolitical instability is something that is out of our control. It is the hands of the politicians and the different governments and it's truly for the corporates you have to navigate and for market operators we have to navigate very carefully but it is not something that we can have a say or have a hand on. Mario? Well, I think the geopolitical tensions are certainly probably for Europe, especially the biggest thing. I will cite a British philosopher, John Lennon, give me a chance. Is there anything that leaders can do today to try and mitigate that? There's a lot and we have the instruments. That's why I have this confidence that we can avoid recession going back to the first question and looking to the future with a bright spot. We can do it. We are improving a lot, institutions across the globe. We need really to put that in practice. You also think they have the tools? Yes, I think it is up to the leaders to work out what would be the best for the world in taking into account obviously their own interests but I would say that for the market, for corporates, it is something we have to learn, to live with, to deal with but very little that we can do. Axel, what are we underestimating? Very difficult to add something but I think to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, to get flexibility, freedom for companies and individuals to develop, to prosper. It's one key theme that we should really be very focused and the second one we didn't touch really is, even in Europe or even in the Western world, there are a lot of people that struggle these days. The topic of social unrest, we didn't touch upon it but to make sure that people can follow the development of the world, the economic development and can participate in that shift into that multipolar world that is very, very important and that brings me back to what you started out on the geopolitical and all the tensions that we are seeing. So I think that question of growing inequality, how can we start to balance that and then innovation will be key. Is there a danger that politicians don't tackle that head on? I mean, Mario mentioned this and it could be through redistribution. I live in the UK where child poverty numbers are really shocking. I think the jury is still out. Okay, on whether we can do something. Thank you so much for a wonderful spirited panel. So thank you all and we will see whether some of this positive optimism comes through. Mario Santé, Laura Cha, Axel Liman and Douglas Peterson. Thank you and have a great day, everyone.