In today's rapidly changing and increasingly complex business world, successful risk management is the key to survival and success. Business leaders are increasingly facing different kinds of risk, from those traditionally associated with the market- project risks, competitive risks, and currency risks, to a set of new, more hazardous threats. Businesses in the Twenty-First century face a range of global risks. These are having an increasingly large impact on the activities of individual firms. While ten or fifteen years ago, risks flowing from civil unrest, climate change, terrorism or pandemics had a very limited effect on business, this is no longer the case. Risks beyond the control of the firm affect businesses more than ever before. Risk is the business of business, and the fundamental job of executives is to anticipate change and manage it on the basis of an opinion about the future. Those who don't take and manage risks properly lose ground and are eventually driven out.

SEÁN CLEARY graduated in social sciences and law at UCT, UNISA and Shiraz,Iran, and has an MBA from Henley Management College, Brunel University, UK. He was a diplomat from 1970 to 1985, serving in Tehran, Washington DC and the western USA, and as chief director in Namibia (1983-85); as well as in the economics and financial division and as head of the training division of the Department of Foreign Affairs. For the past twenty years he has been a director of companies, a visiting lecturer in global corporate strategy, economic development and conflict resolution at business schools, universities and institutes in South Africa, Europe and the USA, and a board member of a number of nonprofit foundations. He is a fellow and strategic adviser to the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, and a member of the faculty of the Parmenides Foundation. His family home is in Constantia, Cape Town.

THIERRY MALLERET holds a PhD and MPhil in economics and an MA in international relations from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris and St Antony's College at Oxford University. From 1988 to 1990, he was chargé de mission in the French prime minister's office in Paris; from 1990-91, resident fellow at the Institute for East-West Security Studies in New York; from 1992-98, associate banker and economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London; and from 1998-99, chief economist and strategist, Alfa Bank, Moscow. He is currently the senior director, Global Risk Network at the World Economic Forum and has written several books, including three French novels. He works in Geneva, Switzerland and his family home is in Bonne, France.

The Modern History of Risk * Today's Risks are Different * The Idiosyncrasies of Risk Perception * The Management of Risk * Defining and Assessing Risk * Risk Assessment Tools * Mitigating Risk * Communication Risk * Global Risk in Historical Perspective * Managing Global Risks * Pulling It Together