There was no pervasive air of imminent doom this time. The 2008 meeting of The Letter – Europe’s Editorial Board at the end of September 2008 was characterised by a sense that things were bad and were about to get worse. They were and they did. Lehman Bros collapsed just before the meeting, and the volcano that is the global banking sector was gearing up to erupt just a few weeks later. What a difference 12 months makes.
The outcome could undoubtedly have been very different, but the participants in the 2009 meeting, held at the Penha Longa golf resort near Sintra in Portugal at the end of September and beginning of October, seemed content that meltdown has been averted. Investment markets — and real estate markets, in particular — still have problems, but the bottom of the market has been and gone, we think, and the nature and scale of those problems is known and understood. Wh