Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, the leading global political risk research and consulting firm. He is a prolific thought leader and author, regularly expressing his views on political issues in public speeches, television appearances, and top publications, including Time magazine, where he is the foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large. Once dubbed the “rising guru” in the field of political risk by The Economist, he teaches classes on the discipline as a professor at New York University. His latest book, Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism, is a New York Times best-seller.
 
In 1998, Ian established Eurasia Group with just $25,000. Today, the company has offices in New York, Washington, San Francisco, London, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Tokyo, as well as a network of experts and resources in 90 countries. As the firm's president and most active public voice, Ian advises leading executives, money managers, diplomats, and heads of state.
 
Ian is credited with bringing the craft of political risk to financial markets—he created Wall Street's first global political risk index (GPRI)—and for establishing political risk as an academic discipline. His definition of emerging markets—“those countries where politics matters at least as much as economics for market outcomes”—has become an industry standard. “G-Zero,” his term for a global power vacuum in which no country is willing and able to set the international agenda, is widely accepted by policymakers and thought leaders.
 
In 2007, Ian was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, where he is the founding chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk. He is the Harold J. Newman Distinguished Fellow in Geopolitics at the Asia Society Policy Institute and serves on the President's Council of the Near East Foundation, the Leadership Council for Concordia, and the Board of Trustees of Intelligence Squared.

Ian earned a master's degree and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, where he went on to become the youngest-ever national fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his bachelor's degree in international relations from Tulane University.

Ian has published nine books including the national bestsellers Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?, and Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World.

Topics:

  • To navigate globalization's choppy waters, every business leader analyzes economic risk when considering overseas investments or looking at market exposure. But do you look beyond reassuring data about per-capita income or economic growth to assess the political risk of doing business in specific countries? If not, you may get blindsided when political forces shape markets in unexpected ways—from U.S. protectionism, China's new Marshall Plan, or European fragmentation. Acclaimed political analyst and entrepreneur, Ian Bremmer explains that by blending political and economic risk analysis, you make savvier investment decisions—seizing valuable opportunities around the globe while avoiding danger zones.

  • A generation after communism’s collapse, the future of free market capitalism isn’t what it used to be. Public wealth, public investment, and public ownership have made a stunning comeback. Certain that command economies are doomed to fail, but afraid that truly free markets will spin beyond their control, the political leadership in China, Russia, the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf and other authoritarian states have invented a new system: state capitalism. Each in their own way, they’re using markets to create wealth that can be directed toward the achievement of political goals. Governments now dominate key domestic economic sectors. The oil companies they own control three-quarters of the world’s crude oil reserves. They use state-owned companies to manipulate entire economic sectors and industries. They own enormous investment funds that have become vitally important sources of capital for Western governments and banks weakened by financial crisis. An expert on the impact of politics on market performance, Ian Bremmer illustrates the rise of state capitalism and details its long-term threat to relations among nations and the future of the global economy. In this presentation, audiences will hear about the rise of state capitalism, why it exists and how it works, and the threat to free market capitalism.

  • We have entered a period of heightened geopolitical and market volatility, what Ian Bremmer calls the “New Abnormal.” In this talk, he explains that over the past years, we’ve seen a financial crisis, a global recession, the Eurozone crisis, and the Arab Spring. All of this comes against the backdrop of a G-Zero world—an environment where no country or group of countries willing and able to sustainably set the international agenda. Audiences will learn that this lack of global leadership will ensure that the ride gets even bumpier before the turbulence subsides. The world without leaders will undermine our ability over the next decade to keep the peace in Asia and the Middle East, to grow the global economy, to reverse the impact of climate change, to feed growing populations, and to protect the most basic of all necessities—air, food, and water. As a result, its effects will be felt in every region of the world, even in cyberspace.

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