2007 forecast: brace for a thrilling ride.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: William Greiner - Michael Orlando - Kate Paul - Gareth Heyman - Meg VanderLaan - Larry Wolfe - Discussion

unless they are in marketing, it's hard to make optimists of business executives because they are always looking 'round the bend for the next kink in their plans. Yet participants in a 2006 round-table of winners of the ColoradoBiz Top Company award had little bad to say about business prospects for the state in 2007.

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The roundtable, in fact, was the most upbeat discussion of economic conditions in Colorado in the four years it has been held in San Francisco as part of a prize-winning trip for the winners of the magazine's tough, annual Top Company competition.

Back in 2003, business executives who took part were mildly confident that the state was on the mend from the terrorist attacks and the national recession of 2001.

This year's roundtable, after two years of strong growth for the winning companies--much of it on an international stage and including the explosive growth of shoe-retailer Crocs--produced a lively enthusiasm for the business climate back home and around the world, an enthusiasm affirmed to varying degrees by two economists' views.

William Greiner, executive vice president and chief investment officer for Kansas City, Mo.-based UMB Financial Corp., which has significant banking operations in Colorado and which hosted the Colorado Top Company San Francisco trip, told the roundtable at its onset that UMB's outlook for the year suggested below-trend, but reasonable growth in national gross domestic product, from 2 percent to 2.5 percent for the year in 2007.

Michael Orlando, the lead officer of the Denver Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, upped that estimate for GDP growth to between 2.5 percent and 3 percent, which probably will make 2007 growth about equal to national economic growth in 2006 by year's end.

Orlando said Colorado probably faces less economic risk than most other states from the two most worrisome pressures on the national economy--falling home prices and rising energy costs.

He attributes that to slower home-price appreciation along the Front Range than in other parts of the country since 2002, and the fact that Colorado's oil-and-gas industry adds jobs as energy prices rise, providing a "hedge" against the cost crunch that is put on businesses and consumers here and elsewhere from rising fuel prices.

Neither economist seemed overly concerned, however, about the possibility of a national recession, although Greiner didn't rule it out. Tucker Hart Adams, probably the most quoted Denver-area economist, has predicted a relatively high likelihood for Colorado to slip into what will be a national recession in the second half of 2007. Yet roundtable participants spoke about their own business outlooks in decidedly more optimistic tones.

"Business is very good for us on the corporate side," said Debbie Messmore, vice president of strategic sales for Polk Majestic Travel, a 2006 Top Company winner. "When Colorado...