Another term enters the economic lexicon as the centre of gravity tilts towards emerging market economies, such as those in Asia.

The world of economics might sometimes struggle to come up with solutions to the woes of debt or weak growth but its practitioners show no sign of losing the ability to conjure up new expressions, such as BRICS, fiscal cliffs or private equity J-curves. A familiar term for a while has been the “G7”. Here comes the "E7".

According to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the rise of emerging market economies, and of Asia in particular, leads the organisation to predict that the seven biggest such nations (E7) of Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey will grow at a much faster pace that G7 countries over the next four decades. (The G7 are France, the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and UK.)

In purchasing power parity terms, the E7 countries could overtake the G7 before 2020 and by the middle of the century, China, the US and India could be by far the largest economies, with a big gap to Brazil in fourth place, ahead of Japan, PwC said in its latest World in 2050 report.

The report adds to a slew of commentary and studies all suggesting that the centre of economic gravity is moving from the developed nations of the West to younger economies further East, a fact driving some of the expansion by the wealth management industry in regions such as Asia-Pacific.

In its rankings of the top 20 countries, based in gross domestic product and measured in purchasing power parity terms, the top country in 2011 was the US; in 2030, the US is expected to fall behind China, and in 2050, China will retain its top spot with the US in second place.