Good morning, Peter Vanham here from Lake Geneva, filling in for Alan.
“Our problem is that life is too good here,” Philippe Leuba, the former Secretary of Economic Development of the Swiss canton of Vaud, told me a few years back, when he spoke at a dinner for visiting businesspeople. His point was that European companies stagnate because they don't expand beyond their comfort zone.
He was vindicated this week when the new Fortune Global 500 list showed the number and strength of companies from Europe in decline. The U.S. and China, meanwhile, emerged as the twin engines of the Fortune Global 500. (You can find a great visualization of that new, bipolar reality here.)
