On 18 January, the National Bureau of Statistics in China revealed that the economy’s working-age population shrank by 3.45m in 2012.
The United Kingdom Prime Minister, David Cameron, today set out a path by which the country could leave the European Union by 2017.
The big New Year business story was that politicians in the United States had pulled the economy back from the brink of the ‘fiscal cliff’, albeit slightly later than planned.
One of the most interesting aspects of our recent Global Dynamism Index (GDI) was the strong performance of mature economies. It was a result Ed Nusbaum described as counterintuitive in that the word dynamism tends to be attributed to faster growing emerging markets such as the BRIC economies.
Economic slowdown hampering business growth efforts. Globally, business optimism dropped for the year ahead from net 23% in Q2 to net 8%, well below the 2010-12 average.
The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were widely regarded as a huge success. Spectators, officials and competitors alike praised not just the efficiency of organisation, but the spirit in which the games were held.
Recovery from the financial crisis remains uncertain across both mature and emerging markets. During the past 12 months we have seen volatile commodity prices, disruptions in supply chains, political uprisings and natural disasters.