Ed Coco, a senior managing director for GE Real Estate, toldGlobeSt.com at a lunch meeting yesterday that one of his company'sstrengths is in its diversity. One aspect of that diversity is inits global business. Coco is national sales leader for NorthAmerica lending for the company and says that 60% of the firm'sbusiness is in its global markets. The opportunities are there, hesaid, and it also allows the company a hedge, should either US orglobal markets slow.

One issue for GE and other firms to watch out for is protectingdata when dealing with global markets. A panel discussion yesterdaytitled "International, Offshoring and Other Trends," focused onglobal data protection and the implications outsourcing has onprivacy issues.

Panelist Lisa J. Sotto, a partner with Hunton & WilliamsLLP, said countries such as India, where much of the outsourcingtakes place, have come under global scrutiny due to lax dataprotection laws. However, that scrutiny has not been relegated toother parts of the globe. "Mexico doesn't really have [dataprotection laws] in place yet" and the US is not beyond reproacheither.