Mumbai: After a dynamic and enlightening first day of the 2nd Global Business Leaders Forum hosted by Commonwealth Business Council (CBC), and co-hosted by Bank of Baroda, in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at Mumbai, the second day started with a discussion on 'Mastering the Global Economy: Reverse Globalisation – Financing the expansion'.

Chaired by Robert Blackburn, Senior Vice President SNC-Lavalin, Canada, the session debated on various aspects of reverse globalisation. ''Reverse globalisation has a variety of versions ranging from emerging companies buying overseas companies to state owned companies buying offshore and bail out by the Sovereign Wealth Funds. These result in wide ranging implications'', commented Blackburn.

Taking the discussion forward, Sunil Kakkad, Partner and Head of India Group, Lawrence Graham LLP, UK talked about the current trends in outbound Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A's). ''Indian offshore investment has almost doubled, exceeding $32 billion in 2007, with most of it being M&A driven'', said Kakkad. He went on to explain the growth drivers as desire to have international footprint resulting into increasing globalisation, increased appetite for risk and larger spending power.

T C Venkat Subramanian, Chairman and Managing Director, Exim Bank gave a statistical flavour to the discussion, when he stated that global FDI flows exceeded $1.3 trillion in 2006, a growth of 38 per cent over the previous year, with most of the FDI flows being in terms of outbound M&A's. He illustrated the role of emerging economies in Asia as being prominent, where due to favourable financing conditions; most of cross border M&A deals were financed through cash/debt financing. ''To sustain global competitiveness, firms need to strive towards adopting proactive measures to enhance their globalisation efforts, technological progress, innovation and human skill development'', emphasized Subramanian.

The discussion progressed, with Tom Troubridge, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers, UK stressing that competition to attract IPO's was growing between America and Europe, with Europe having 132 IPO's in 2006 against USA's 29. In 2007, this changed to Europe having 126 IPO's as against USA, which recorded 50. Troubridge further explained the reasons of companies getting attracted to offshore IPO's as access to global investors, springboard for international expansion and political hedge among others.

During the second session, human potential, and the need for leaders as against managers and the relevance of job titles in today's corporate environment was discussed. Titled '21st Century Leadership Challenge: Unlocking the Human Capital- The Demise of Job Title', the session was introduced by Dato Mohamed Sulaiman, Chairman, Redmax, Malaysia.

Dato Sulaiman stressed on the importance of human skills as against the need for corporate hierarchy and emphasised that with the global skill shortage, Asia was being looked at as a dominant player in human capital market. ''How developing countries capitalize on human skills and adopt strategies would be the key factor in ensuring effective management of human resource'', said Sulaiman.

Francis Estrada, President, Asia Institute of Management, Philippines talked about Asia's Renaissance and it's reengineering from the 1997 crisis, which transformed Asia into a centre for regional growth. Estrada commented that with a population of about 3.7 billion, Asia has a huge emergent educated middle class and a very large work force. ''One of the most exhilarating experiences is disappearance of geographical boundaries for development of human skill. It is clear that the new enterprise paradigm should focus on long term objectives of inclusive growth and stakeholder benefits and must imbibe corporate governance. Asia continues to labour under historical and cultural devices, leadership challenge is to bridge those devices'', opined Estrada.

Holding an opinion that there is no demise of job titles but instead an upgrade of job titles, Ambassador Mark Hong, Vice Chairman, International relations Committee, Singapore Business Federation, said, ''The challenge is to boost creativity and make work more enriching. To progress further, Asia needs to move up the technology ladder, to strengthen innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship in order to enable a worker to perform better.''

Taking the discussion on significance of job titles in today's corporate world, Manoj Varghese, Director Human Resources, Google, India stated that job titles no more define work boundaries. ''In the fast paced growing corporate environment, a worker is expected to go much beyond his job title, his title merely defining the minimum expected of him'', said Varghese. ''With faster growth, consolidation, skill dependent competitive market place and widening gaps between demand and supply, need of the hour is to develop leaders, knowledge creators and thinkers, who can be different and effective'', he concluded.

Concluding the two days Forum, Sanjiv Ahuja, Chairman Orange UK and Chairman and CEO, Augere, UK spoke on the shape of business in the 21st century.  Stressing on the importance of private enterprises, Ahuja said ''51 of the 100 largest economies of today are private enterprises. Power is in the hands of the private sector and the corporates have a very serious role to play to shoulder the accompanying responsibilities''.  He detailed on fundamental challenges faced by industry today as environmental issues, global warming, poverty and lack of connectivity among others. He emphasized the role of the 21st century leader as one who would evaluate and not speculate. ''Every challenge creates business and social opportunities'' said Ahuja.