Billionaires attending the World Economic Forum's annual meeting this week in Davos expect to be richer when they return to the Alpine village next year. About a half-dozen of the wealthiest participants said stocks will rise, interest rates will remain low and they'd avoid investing in the virtual currency, bitcoin, in 2014.
At least 80 billionaires have joined more than 2,500 business and political leaders in Davos this week, according to a list of attendees and promotional materials obtained by Bloomberg News.
Denis O'Brien, the chairman of Hamilton, Bermuda-based Digicel Group Ltd, the largest telecommunications company in the Caribbean, said he was bullish on equities.
"I'm going to stick with global telecom stocks," the 55-year-old billionaire said in an e-mail. He said if he had $100 million to invest, he would bet $40 million on Vodafone Group Plc, $20 million in Bharti Airtel Ltd, $20 million in SoftBank Corp, and $20 million in Bangkok-based Advanced Info Service.
O'Brien said the biggest hurdle facing the global economy are politicians. "They are more and more worried about their re-election than growing their economies," he said.
Billionaire Adi Godrej, 71, agreed interest rates would rise "somewhat in the developed world," though he expects them to "come down in the developing world."
Godrej, who has visited Davos for more than 20 years, forecast that the bull market in stocks would continue. His family's holdings, which include real estate and consumer goods, had revenue of $4.1 billion in the year ended March 2013 and are used by more than half a billion Indians every day.
His cousin, Jamshyd Godrej, crossed paths with Bajaj Auto Ltd Chairman Rahul Bajaj at last year's meeting, one of many meetings among the 17 Indian billionaires in attendance, topped only by the US contingent last year.
"I see the bull market continuing," billionaire Malvinder Singh, executive chairman of Fortis Healthcare Ltd. India's second-biggest hospital operator, said in an e-mail.
