Political A-listers skip the annual talkfest in the Swiss Alps as business elite arrive in droves.
Some of the most prominent tech companies are dialing back their participation amid rounds of heavy layoffs | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
BY RYAN HEATH
JANUARY 16, 2023 4:00
AM CET
4 MINUTES READ
DAVOS, Switzerland — The World
Economic Forum’s annual conclave in the Swiss Alps is the greatest intersection
of wealth and political power on the global calendar, but this year the balance
is shifting.
Instead, it’s
a European-heavy guest list: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is the only leader from a G7 country, sharing top
billing with European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen, another German.
Even within
European royal ranks, the forum this year is attracting the likes of Queen Maxima of the Netherlands — a
U.N. financial inclusion envoy — rather than environmental campaigners such as
King Charles and Prince William.
Some of the
most prominent tech companies are dialing back their participation amid rounds
of heavy layoffs.
And the
biggest party hosts in town — Russian
oligarchs — remain forced out by sanctions levied since Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has
unrivaled star wattage among the Davos crowd — but even a video appearance
from him this year will be treated as below par, given how many of them he now
does.
It’s the C-Suite, stupid!
With the global political elite mostly absent,
WEF is this year choosing to focus on rising CEO numbers.
Among 2,700 participants in official WEF sessions,
“we’re likely to surpass the old record from 2020 with 600 global CEOs —
including 1,500 C-suite level overall,” said WEF’s head of digital and
marketing George Schmitt, who added that 80 of the CEOs are first-timers in
Davos.
Those who
claim Davos is dead are yet to be proven right, but WEF’s critics now spread
beyond the activist world who have long disparaged the juxtaposition of private
jet opulence with hand-wringing panels about global poverty.
WEF would attract even globalization’s strongest
skeptics: from U.S. President Donald Trump to former Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty
Images
The U.S.
delegation includes cabinet members such as climate envoy John Kerry, who will camp out in Davos for most of the week, but
others such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are skipping.
It’s not that
Yellen has better things to do at home: She’s embarking on an 11-day trip
with stops in Senegal, Zambia and South
Africa, with no
time for Davos.
Nobel Peace
Prize winner Beatrice Fihn, who
campaigns to eliminate nuclear weapons, said she “genuinely had forgotten that
Davos is still happening.”
“The format seems slightly dated now. The private jets and
oligarch parties are no longer in step with modern biz [business] life,” said
Scott Colvin, a Davos veteran who is now public affairs director at Aviva. “The
events around COP [the U.N.’s annual climate summit] now feel a bigger deal,
given their focus on a specific global policy objective,” he added.
WEF is a
victim of its own success and stuck in a demographic bind.
The forum’s
operating model requires it to provide a place for the world’s most powerful
and influential people to talk.
In 2020
Bloomberg calculated 119
billionaires joined the party, with a combined net worth of more than $500
billion.
WEF’s efforts to bring the uber-elite
together is a stark annual reminder that they don’t look like the rest of
us.
The best ratio of female participants in
WEF’s 52-year history of in-person gatherings was 24 percent, in
2020.
Despite years of exhortations and incentives for members to bring more female colleagues, the number often hovers in the range of 18 percent to 20 percent. A WEF spokesperson said that 42 percent of speakers this year will be women.
WEF aims for global reach — but often lands in the middle of the Atlantic instead.
This year Europe is supplying the most
political leaders, while the U.S. corporate delegation will once again massively
outweigh the others. The 700 Americans participating this year outnumber
the Chinese delegation roughly 20 to 1.
Bron: https://www.politico.eu/article/davos-world-economic-forum-guest-list-politics-business/