Business redraws the map to find the continents of Lapac and Rumea
Geography has changed since you were at school. Whole new continents and regions are being created by business. Latest additions to the globe, courtesy of Reckitt Benckiser, are Lapac and Rumea.
It used to be politicians that carved up the map. Now it is commerce. It was Goldman Sachs that invented the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. Then Ceevits were created – China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa.
Economists, financiers and businessmen see the world differently to others. That’s why Reckitt has put its flag in Lapac –Latin America, the Asian Pacific, Australasia and China – plus Rumea, which covers Russia, the Middle East and Africa. That’s where the household goods company thinks the treaure is buried.
But even in finance, the tectonic plates keep shifting. For years EMEA was a key business regional for multinationals: now Europe, Middle East and Africa has been honed into CEEMEA to restrict the Continent to Central Eastern Europe.
Much of the remainder of Europe is now in that imaginary region called the Eurozone, of course, with the PIGS carved out to separate Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain - a group once known more affectionately as the ClubMed nations. On the other side of the world in ASEAN – the Asian and South-East Asian Nations and the Asia-Pacific region.
We used to refer to undeveloped countries, and when that was considered too brutal they were renamed less-developed countries or LDCs. From their they became developing countries, the Third World and are currently Emerging Markets. But in fact these are the drivers of tomorrow’s economy.
Regions disappear too as economies change. The Near East - Egypt and the Gulf to Iraq – has been renamed the Middle East and the Far East is no longer politically correct. And what will Reckitt call the United Kingdom if Scotland votes to leave? It is a constantly changing map.
