Discovery CEO Adrian Gore. File photo
Adrian Gore, the CEO of Discovery, said in a LinkedIn post on Friday that he had a fascinating few days at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos and wanted to share a few things that stood out to him.
The first is the transformation in sentiment around South Africa, both from within the country and from the global business and investment community. Ending loadshedding and the partnership between business and the government has created a completely different dynamic, which we need to capitalise on. South Africa’s leadership of the B20 and G20 will also play a key role in this.
There is really a sense of a different emerging South Africa. The big institutional investors see a difference. “So that is very powerful,” he said in a video
The second is the massive effect the US election has had on global politics, economics, trade, and balances of power, which brings with it a number of risks and opportunities in the international landscape. The world is a different place.
The third is the outsized and pervasive influence of technology, taking multiple forms from AI to quantum computing to crypto to cybersecurity to scientific and medical breakthroughs.
Gore pointed out that SAP, Salesforce, Meta, and Microsoft were at WEF, giving a sense of the presence and power of technology.
“So really AI was dominating the US election,” he observed.
He said the potential is vast, but so are the risks. There are opportunities to rethink the way we structure and offer financial services, moving towards a more personalised and consumer-centric approach.
“We are living in very interesting, complex, and exciting times,” Gore said.
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