WorldCity Business Magazine

Optimism rains, but not all in the same place

by Joachim Bamrud

Brazil is a great market. Brazil is a disappointing market. Turns out, it depends on who you ask. Miami International Airport is a significant obstacle to South Florida achieving greatness or no obstacle at all, depending on who is answering the question.

WorldCity’s CEO Roundtable brings together on a monthly basis some of the top leaders in South Florida’s multinational community. Five executives generally heads of Latin America operations sit around a table with WorldCity for 90 minutes of open discussion, all recorded, sometimes spirited, sometimes biting, always flush with insights.

With six such roundtables under our belts, WorldCity went back to participants in the first five participants in the sixth CEO Roundtable are featured in the story beginning on Page 16 to ask some questions for our first Semi-Annual CEO Roundtable Survey.

Brazil, as the grid shows, received six A’s, five B’s and three D’s. For “Obstacles to Greatness,” we used a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a big obstacle. Averaging the 14 responses, the biggest obstacle is Education/Schools at 7.3 a pretty big obstacle. The smallest and this either shows how far this community has come or how relative things air for frequent visitors to Latin America’s urban capitals is crime, at 4.2.

Best run city in Latin America and the Caribbean? Five votes for Monterrey, Mexico and three for Santiago. Worst run? Well, a few executives shied away from answering this one but Sao Paulo, with three votes, was the only city mentioned more than once. It is also a critical city for most of these executives.

Biggest surprise this year is Argentina, with four votes, followed by Colombia with two.