Davos 2023: What CEOs are saying about recession, tech, and other top themes

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi recap the first couple of days at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and what they're hearing from CEOs, economists, and other leaders at the event.

Video transcript

GARY COHN: Talking about recessions, but of course, when I talk to people and I ask them about their business, they seem to think their business is OK. So everyone here seems to think the other person has a problem.

BRIAN MOYNIHAN: Mild recession, slightly down for a couple of quarters, and then back to slightly up, and then more normal in '24 and into '25.

- I don't think that we are too deep into recession so far.

- I think there will be parts of the world that go into recession this year. But we will choose to ignore that in the parts of the world that are enjoying continued growth.

JARED BLIKRE: "Recession" is a word heard around the Alps and Davos. And those were just some of the voices we've heard from so far warning that a recession could be coming this year. Now let's get back on the ground in Davos, Switzerland, where Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi are standing by. You guys look great, if not a little frigid. But how are things there?

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, not bad, Jared. No, we're not frigid. It's a little cooler out here, but all things are going well, maybe actually a lot better than what we're hearing from executives here in terms of how their businesses are going in the economy. A lot of executives like we just talked to-- you saw on the tape right there, focused on recession, planning for recession, in some cases. We just talked to KPMG US CEO, looking at a lot of companies potentially looking to restructure their business.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and sort of preparing for a slowdown is what we're hearing. But it's not that negative, really, the rhetoric that we're hearing. Despite what you just heard, yes, people are talking about a slowdown. They're talking about a potential recession. But we also heard less pessimistic comments from IMF head Gita Gopinath, right, where she was talking about, the economists there are talking about that we are going to have a slowdown, but it maybe won't be as bad as first feared.

And the other thing that struck me that I thought was really interesting, Brian, we talked to Chuck Robbins of Cisco. And he said all you guys in the media want to ask us about recession. And people externally want to talk about recession. But the meetings he's having with other executives, the meetings he's having with global leaders, they're not necessarily talking about recession. They're talking about specific business initiatives, specific partnerships, specific philanthropic work that they are working on. So it's interesting, that sort of divide, if you will, between the discussions we're having and we want to know about, and what they're discussing amongst themselves.

BRIAN SOZZI: Right, Julie, and that's one bubble here. And the other bubble is just this overall event. You know, you're hearing news, and you have investors on the Yahoo Finance platform right now seeing or waking to news of Microsoft laying off 10,000 people. I look down the promenade. I see Salesforce recently laid off, what, almost 10,000 people of its own. That's Amazon, excuse me-- 10,000 people. They have an installation here. 20,000 layoffs alone from the two big tech companies on this promenade here at the World Economic Forum.

And on Thursday, Microsoft is slated and reportedly to have their cocktail party, guest singer Sting. Now I would like to see more humility here from these big tech companies because in many respects, they are acting the same way they did at every other single World Economic Forum I've been here and then likely the ones that I wasn't able to get to because I wasn't in this field.

JULIE HYMAN: I will-- eh.

BRIAN SOZZI: I know.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, we'll debate more on that later.

BRAD SMITH: OK. Well, I mean, continuing the conversation, though, you also heard some criticism on tech from friend of the show Ian Bremmer while you were out there. What did he have to say?

JULIE HYMAN: Well, Ian Bremmer of Eurasia just talked about the dominance of tech titans and their disinterest in being really stewards of democracy and playing that role. This is what he said.

IAN BREMMER: That's Elon Musk. That's Jeff Bezos. That's Mark Zuckerberg. It's all these people. But the fact is that those people worth hundreds of billions of dollars also, at the same time, have literally no interest or conception in their role as stewards for civil society and American democracy. That is the different sides of the absolute same coin. And all of America's lionizing free markets and capitalism has also led to a vastly more dysfunctional democratic process because these companies are inadvertently, but nonetheless, aligning with business models that destroy democracy.

JULIE HYMAN: You know, and he was talking about, in particular, social media. He brought up the idea that China does not allow many of these social media platforms there because they see their destructive power. So that was an interesting theme that he was talking about as well. Not as much of the zeitgeist here, but still an interesting point that he made. And we're going to hear much more of Bremmer's comments later in the show.

BRIAN SOZZI: And he was very much right on the mark. And by and large, big cap tech has been unchecked by various administrations in the government for some time now. And guess what? Newsflash to these folks in government-- the next wave of AI and AI intelligence is coming. And we've talked a lot of executives here that this could be a job killer. We've got to sample some apps here and what they could and may or may not do, and they're absolutely mind blowing. One of my thoughts among many is, well, wow, that's going to be-- we're going to need probably less five less fewer workers at XYZ company.

JULIE HYMAN: I want to circle back to something you were talking about before just real quick, which all these layoffs that we're talking about and the disconnect between that and the obvious spending that's happening here, optically, yes. But from a real perspective, if you look at how much they might be spending here on the promenade and really realistically how many jobs that's equal to, we're not talking about a lot. But it's an optics issue, rather than a real, like, how are they allocating the spending issue. We also know they're not cutting jobs across the board. They're cutting them in areas where they overhired or that they don't think are going to grow as much.

BRIAN SOZZI: Optics-- you're right on the mark, Julie. Optically, it's not a good look because if you're a Microsoft employee today that is getting a pink slip, you're probably going on to LinkedIn and posting and letting your network know about that you are no longer employed by Microsoft. Then you might also see news that, oh, yeah, Sting is playing at a Microsoft cocktail party at one of the most exclusive events for CEOs and billionaires in the world. I think it's an extremely big disconnect. And I'm very fired up about it, clearly.

BRAD SMITH: All right.

JULIE HYMAN: Clearly.

BRAD SMITH: Well, it's hard to imagine.

JULIE HYMAN: Back to you guys.

BRAD SMITH: It's hard to imagine that anybody would throw a tomato at Sting while he's performing, but I would point you in the direction of Ian Bremmer if you do see a tomato thrown. Thank you so much for checking in with us here, Julie and Brian.