'The world is not as dangerous a place as we've been led to believe'

That was the message from Richard Fenning, chief executive of consultancy Control Risks.

Speaking on the last day of the ITT conference, he warned that the image painted by the media of an unsafe world was not true, and that we should be reassured that “the world is not as dangerous a place as some would have you believe”.

“We live in an age that is obsessed by risk. The world is not nearly as bad a shape as you would think if you looked at a newspaper,” he said.

Fenning cited this as the reason that a number of previous ITT delegates decided to avoid this year’s conference, due to its location in Tel Aviv. “As humans we have this extraordinary inbuilt software that enables us to distinguish if something is dangerous or not.

“Unfortunately it malfunctions when we all get together collectively. For example Israel is one of the safest places, and it ranks low on the risk index. But some people read things and arrived at the conclusion [it wasn’t safe].

“It’s the gap between risk and fear that terrorism exploits,” he added.

Fenning also stressed that he did not believe the world was facing “an existential threat from terrorism”.

“The media would imply that the world is on the brink of an apocalypse. And that’s just not the case,” he said.