With a "crazy" travel schedule spanning Ghana, the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia and his home base of South Africa in just a few weeks, Cas Coovadia is on a global mission to lobby countries around the world ahead of November's G20 in Johannesburg. As 'sherpa" of the B20 - the G20's official dialogue forum for the global business community - Coovadia has spent months forging consensus among eight taskforces populated by business leaders from across the G20 nations.
Armed with 30 hard-won recommendations from the taskforces, he now seeks to persuade G20 governments - using every global forum possible - to adopt the measures when the politicians sit down together. Amid global trade turbulence, Donald Trump's tariff wars and growing challenges to multilateralism, the voice of beleaguered businesses has rarely been more relevant. Coovadia was head of lobby group Business Unity South Africa until April, so has a history of coaxing reluctant politicians into backing the business community - a trick he hopes to repeat at the G20.
Forging global consensus"I think that this is probably the first opportunity that's presented itself for businesses and governments of the biggest economies to get together and talk about the current dynamics and what to do about it - so I think it's a critical juncture," he says.