War, Politics Eclipse Economics on Davos Leaders’ Minds

Never mind interest rates, inflation or recession. The economic concerns that usually preoccupy the global elite at their annual gathering in Davos are taking a back seat to hot war in Ukraine and the Middle East, cold war between the West and China and watershed elections from India to the U.S.

For government and business leaders, it is a disorienting departure from a world in which fortunes were mainly driven by financial forces. The World Economic Forum, which hosts the meeting, is now the de facto world geopolitical forum.

“There’s a higher-level issue than the economy, which is geopolitics,” said Christian Mumenthaler, chief executive of reinsurance giant Swiss Re, which insures risks around the world. Geopolitics hasn’t been so big an economic threat since the height of the first Cold War in the 1980s, he said.

“We’re starting this year with the longest list I ever recall of potential disruptions,” said Christian Ulbrich, chief executive of real-estate company JLL, which operates around the world. “You really have to run your organisation in an extremely agile way so that you can react immediately.”

Longtime Davos attendees came of age in a world in which products, capital and people flowed ever more freely. But globalisation began fragmenting in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union and Donald Trump was elected president—and who went on to withdraw from a global climate accord and a trade pact with Pacific nations and then hike tariffs sharply, especially on China.

Deglobalisation has gathered speed with the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the intensifying rivalry between the U.S and China and the newfound appeal of industrial policy—governments directing resources to favoured home industries. That is over and above the hazards thrown up by the natural world, such as extreme weather.

The upshot is that political events that were once peripheral to business leaders’ concerns are now central, especially when optimism is high that major economies will lower inflation without recession, so-called soft landings.

The U.S. election is on everyone’s minds because of the potential for Trump to return to the White House. On Monday, Trump won the first Republican nominating contest, in Iowa, by a wide margin.

“Every conversation begins with a query about my assessment of the outcome of Iowa, who’s going to win New Hampshire, and what are the odds of Trump 2.0,” said Tim Adams, president of the Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based group of international banks, and a former senior Treasury official under President George W. Bush. The questions are driven by trepidation, curiosity and fear that “the U.S. retreats, engages in protectionism, isolationism.”

One European bank chief said he has conducted “game-boarding exercises” to figure out how a Trump administration could play out for his business.

The U.S. election is one of many taking place this year, and for some companies, it isn’t necessarily the most salient. Last Saturday, Taiwan elected as president the candidate most opposed by Communist-ruled China, which is pressing for reunification with the self-governing island. Taiwan is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s dominant supplier of the most advanced microchips.

Many major tech companies depend on those chips. They must reckon with the possibility that military or economic coercion by China, or even war that draws in the U.S., could interrupt that supply. U.S. restrictions on investment and trade related to crucial technologies, including chips, have already disrupted what was once one of the world’s most integrated industries.

The threat to the chip supply “is a risk. That needs to be factored into all analyses you can do,” said Börje Ekholm, chief executive of Swedish telecommunications manufacturer Ericsson. The company has been focused on diversifying its supply chain for semiconductors and other parts since 2018, he said. “You also need to think about how you’re going to manage the situation where chip supply will be constrained.”

Gita Gopinath, the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund, said business leaders are worried about geopolitics interfering with trade and investment for good reason: “Fragmentation is a reality, it’s not just a threat.”

While trade has slowed everywhere since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has slowed down more between blocs of allied countries—such as between the West and China or Russia—than within blocs. She said this shows that efforts to confine trade restrictions to strategic sectors, such as high tech, are failing, and a more general decoupling between blocs might be under way.

A study released by the McKinsey Global Institute Wednesday echoed the IMF’s findings. China, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S. have all reoriented trade toward allies or nonaligned countries like Mexico and Vietnam, it said

China’s share of U.S. imports of laptop computers and mobile phones, though not subject to tariffs, fell between 2017 and 2022, with much of that share going to Vietnam, the report said. Mexico, it noted, became the largest trade partner of the U.S. last year. Germany all but halted imports of natural gas from Russia while vastly increasing imports from Norway, a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

That politics, not economics, might govern where companies sell and invest is a new reality that is taking some getting used to. Mike Henry, chief executive of Australian coal and mineral company BHP, said the company has always advocated free trade as the most efficient way to bring commodities to market. “A world of open trade and where countries are able to compete on natural advantage—that’s the world of the past. That’s not the reality we live in today.”

A few years ago China, upset with Australia for demanding an inquiry into Covid’s origins, cut many imports from the country, including coal from BHP, which saw its sales there fall. Though relations between Australia and China have since improved, BHP has since found other markets for that coal. Still, Henry said that in time, economic factors such as shipping rates will once again influence where it sells.

Some executives see hopeful signs, in particular that a rapprochement between China and the U.S. that began last fall will continue, in part because China is trying to help its faltering economy.

Geopolitical tensions also have beneficiaries. After artificial intelligence, the loudest buzz in Davos might be directed at India. Many executives called it their most promising foreign market, and its appeal has only grown now that Russia and much of China are off limits.

“When disruptions take place, people are trying to hedge,” said Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s minister of oil and gas. “But India has a growth story of its own. That is what is driving interest in India.”

For some companies, geopolitical tensions are weighing on employees, not just management. “People are concerned about what’s going on in the world,” JLL’s Ulbrich said. Conflict, or the threat of it, in Europe, Israel/Gaza and China weighs on people, he added. “They don’t know what’s going to happen and look to other people, leaders, for what’s going to happen, but leaders don’t know either.”

—Chip Cutter and Alex Frangos contributed to this article.

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

War, Politics Eclipse Economics on Davos Leaders’ Minds

Hot and cold wars, fragmenting trade and key elections fuel anxiety at annual forum

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.