Over 600 business leaders and 200 students: It can only be St Gallen - 38 years of gatherings organized by the students to discuss the challenges facing companies and communities.
Think Davos World Economic Forum with more intimacy and less Emma Thompson, Bono or Himalayan pipe music.
It's still a Swiss town, but substitute the showbiz for a president of Unilever, Kees van der Graaf, the head of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackerman, and the turnaround chief at Daimler, Dieter Zetsche. These were just some of the 'names'.
So what was the zeitgeist this year? Well the agenda was a reworking of the business cliché ‘think local act global’. The challenge? How can global companies act in accordance with local values? Basically, the official topic was loose enough to allow the participants to bring their own axe and grind it loudly.
Away from the set-piece events we tackled a number of CEOs on their earnings visibility and outlook for the rest of the year. It’s looking less rosy according to Dr. Luca Majocchi, the CEO of Seat Pagine Gialli the Italian directory business. It's definitely looking tougher said Stine Bosse, CEO of Danish insurer Tryg Vesta. To top that Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times thought equity markets haven't quite got to grips yet with a slower earnings outlook.