Shanghai Today
Shanghai, the city of 'boundless opportunities,' hosts an A-list of global business leaders - October 12, 2025
上海，这座充满“无限机遇”的城市，汇聚了众多全球商界领袖
Top executives of some of the world's biggest companies is gathering in Shanghai to discuss the city's business environment and give advice on future development to the mayor and other municipal officials.
The annual International Business Leaders' Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai (IBLAC), founded in 1989, has grown into a valuable think tank, offering input from some of the best business minds in the world. This year's council meeting begins on October 12.
Severin Schwan, chairman of Swiss drug giant Roche Group, will chair this year's meeting, which is themed "Openness, Innovation and Inclusiveness – Shanghai's Development Strategy Toward 2030."
"Shanghai seeks an open dialogue with different stakeholders, welcoming diverse perspectives and facilitating collaboration," said Schwan, a long-time council member who describes himself as an old friend of Shanghai and has witnessed the city's phenomenal growth into a global hub of finance, science, technology and advanced industries.
"In light of unprecedented global challenges, there is a pressing need for even increased international cooperation, particularly in science and technology," Schwan said.
Severin Schwan (fourth from left), chairman of Roche Group, attends an IBLAC sideline event in Shanghai in 2017.
The mayor's council was first formed by the then Shanghai Mayor Zhu Rongji, who later became China's premier. Starting with 12 members from eight countries, it has grown into 46 members from 15 countries, with 10 honorary members.
Shanghai is a fitting venue for such a meeting. The city has become the leading magnet in China for foreign investment and is home to about 60,000 foreign-invested companies and nearly 1,000 regional headquarters of multinationals. In the first five months of this year alone, nearly 2,500 foreign firms were registered in the city, with direct investment of US$7.6 billion.
Among the upper echelon of global companies based in the city are Microsoft, Tesla, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Starbucks, L'Oreal, Volkswagen, BASF, ABB, Samsung, Costco, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens and Unilever.
"Shanghai is a place where possibilities flourish and opportunities abound, enabling dreams to become realities," said council chair Schwan.
Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng will host the council meeting in October, with a welcoming address by Party Secretary Chen Jining. Professor Mark J. Greenven from the International Institute for Management Development will give the keynote speech, and Chip Kaye, president of Warburg Pincus, and Zhang Lei, chief executive of Hillhouse Investment, will also address the group.
The meeting will feature discussion panels focused on topics that include technology empowerment, how to capitalize on strategic advantages, the opening-up of more business opportunities, and greening the future.
Development of artificial intelligence, the big buzz word in the world of technology this year, will also be a major topic of discussion. Shanghai is a leader in the high-tech field in China.
"Artificial intelligence, sustainable development and waves of rapid technological evolution are reshaping the global competitive landscape, creating unprecedented development opportunities and introducing new challenges," said Manny Maceda, chairman of Bain & Co.
Shanghai is home to about 60,000 foreign-invested companies and nearly 1,000 regional headquarters of multinationals.
Foreign business leaders have shown themselves keen to be partners in the city's progress toward a global powerhouse.
Jean-Paul Agon, chairman of L'Oreal Group and another long-time member of the mayor's council, described Shanghai as both a source of tech innovation and a vanguard of consumption.
"Shanghai combines both dual engines of growth, and in doing so, takes its place among leading cities in the world," Agon said.
Merlin Swire, CEO of John Swire and Sons, said Shanghai has established itself as a leading center for health care in China, but at the same time, the city faces growing pressures due to a rapidly ageing population, escalating health-care costs, talent constraints and overcrowding at tertiary hospitals that invite foreign experience.
New attendees on the council this year include executives from companies that include South Korea's SK Group, German sportswear giant adidas, Japan's Mizuho Financial Group, US sportswear company Nike, France's water and waste management group Veolia and Brazilian mining giant Vale.
These companies may be new to the council but they are no strangers to Shanghai's development. Paris-based Veolia, for example, has been serving as a water supplier in Shanghai's Pudong New Area for more than two decades, and it invested heavily in new technologies that use AI to monitor water quality.
Critical to Shanghai's future development is its vast array of research and development parks that have drawn some of the biggest global innovators and brightest talent to the city.
"Shanghai will continue to expand high-level opening-up and create a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based and transparent," according to the Shanghai Commission of Commerce, which has just increased incentives for foreign enterprises companies to locate regional headquarters in the city.
"The city will spare no effort to support and serve foreign-invested companies," the commission said. "That will deepen their involvement in Shanghai and help them and the city grow stronger."
A robot dog is seen to be patrolling a waterworks in Shanghai's Pudong New Area operated by French water and waste management group Veolia. The firm, first-time attendee of IBLAC meeting, has been investing heavily in new technologies that use AI.
Source: City News Service
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