The worlds of business, politics and science collide at the ISC Symposium, writes Karlin Lillington

Legend has it that Irish monk Gallus, namesake of the university town of St Gallen, was wandering through this picturesque valley in 612AD when he fell into a thorny bush and took it as a sign from God to establish a hermitage.

In 2003 it is the global economy that seems to have stumbled into a prickly place and is not quite sure how to get out, according to the senior business and political figures who gathered for a major conference held at St Gallen University's famed business school.

The student-run ISC Symposium - a kind of alternative to Davos, that other Swiss business and political affair - is now in its 33rd year.

Some 600 participants from the worlds of science, business and politics mix with 250 students, chosen through an international competition.

Attendees not only listen to a range of keynote speeches and special session discussion topics but are expected to join in.

This obviously makes for some electric conversations, as when London Daily Telegraph editor Mr Charles Moore gave his view of the current state of the US-European relationship, or when a Dutch businessman challenged symposium chairman Lord Griffiths (the vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs) over chief executive compensation packages.

A number of disgruntled American attendees reportedly even walked out of the staid-sounding discussion on tax competition because it became too political.

The political and business fallout of the Iraq war and the continuing parlous state of the world economy have been the dominant topics in a conference, whose overall theme is "Seeking responses in times of uncertainty".

Also getting in a good look-in are issues concerning corporate governance, particularly newly stringent requirements for corporate accounting for those companies listed on the American market.

Lord Griffiths set the tone for the three-day event in his opening remarks, when he noted: "We now live in the most uncertain times since the 1930s. Throughout the world, there's no obvious engine of economic growth, and that creates great uncertainty."

With the sundering of European and American world views after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the Iraq war, he wondered: "Can we even talk about the West as a single entity any more?"

But other speakers were more sanguine.

While all acknowledged that Big Business wasn't exactly jousting for a position in the morality hall of fame at the moment - "The corporate gods of yesterday have become the demons of today," as keynote speaker Mr NK Singh of India's Planning Commission noted - many speakers sought a silver lining.

For Mr Singh, the upside is the promise of jobs and a rising standard of living that lies in India's growing technology industry, and of Western interest in outsourcing to India's cheaper labour market.

He went on to speak of the need sometimes to take an unorthodox economic approach when pursuing both growth and stability, adding that he felt India's investment in its internet, telecommunications and roads infrastructure was central to its fast development as a service economy.

The financial markets still had plenty of life and power in them yet and, far from having acted unpredictably during the recent boom, they performed exactly as one would expect, keynote speaker Mr Marcel Ospel, who is chairman of Swiss national bank UBS, said.

He blamed much of the turbulence of recent economic times on "too many executives becoming obsessed with shareholder value" rather than planning for the long-term growth of their companies, and on "opaque financial manipulations" that distorted earnings and balance sheets at companies like Enron.

Mr Ospel also pinpointed "careless lending practices", "unprofessional analyses in research departments" and "unjustifiable privileges" that gave some executives huge returns on share allocations.

He argued that now, "shareholder value" must mean "long-term sustainable corporate value", not quick returns.

According to Lord Griffiths, the markets worst affected by such corporate mismanagement were the emerging markets in developing countries, because the big economies could ride out even 0 per cent growth for the short term.

But many were wary of controlling such excesses by throwing more regulations and restrictions on business.

Transparency was the answer for Mr Stephen Green, group chief executive office, HSBC Holdings.

"The one thing I'd be keen on is transparency. I'd like to see us go much more in that direction than toward something more bureaucratically driven," he said.

And there was general agreement among speakers and participants on what companies needed to do to survive.

"We have to be adaptive. We have to look forward," said Dr Helmut Panke, chairman of the board of BMW.