On Wednesday night I went to a panel debate held at the London Stock Exchange and hosted by the Financial Times as part of its ‘Future of Capitalism’ series. The debate was introduced by Dame Clara Furse, CEO of the LSE, chaired by the Editor of the FT, Lionel Barber, and the panel included Sir Martin Sorrel, CEO of WPP, Jorma Ollila, Chairman of both Nokia and Shell and Chris Giles, the Economics Editor at the FT. Phew – what a line up!

Clearly everyone at the debate was an advocate of capitalism and I couldn’t help but wish there was a socialist in the wings just waiting to pop out and surprise us all! Needless to say this didn’t happen. However the panel gave us all more than enough to think about by talking about issues as diverse as when those elusive ‘greenshoots’ everyone hears so much about will start to appear (general consensus seemed to be that there would be a financial bounce at the end of the year but that tough times remain ahead of us in 2010), the role played by individuals in creating the recession (in the words of Sir Martin, “capitalism isn’t the problem, it’s the capitalists”) and the degree to which national protectionist policies should be introduced to support individual countries (all in all, best to be avoided it seems).

For me, the main lesson from the debate was that although in principle capitalism remains sound, we just need to keep a check on those individuals who might be lured into irresponsible practices by the amount of wealth on offer. In conclusion, a very educational evening full of interesting insights, experiences and anecdotes – and the canapés weren’t half bad either!

Post by Abbie Waller