Davos Jan. 17 (U.S.): There are a record number of national leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos this week, but high-profile names who wouldn’t dazzle on snowy streets are also attracting attention.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is the only leader of the Group of Seven (G7) slated to attend the 53rd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, reports German news agency (dpa).
US President Joe Biden will remain in office, along with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Other players outside the G7’s advanced economies are also unfazed, most notably Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who have vowed to put his country back on the world stage.
With large parts of the world suffering from soaring food and fuel prices, and the global economy seeming to be on the brink of recession, presidents and prime ministers may have decided that a stay in Switzerland would be a bad look back home.
Some have canceled on short notice: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, for example, was one of the 52 political leaders on the list of attendees at the forum, but canceled the visit on Sunday due to an ongoing energy crisis that has left many citizens in the dark.
Over the past several days, nearly 60 million South Africans have had to contend with an eight-hour power outage each day. South Africa relies for nearly 80% of its power generation on aging coal-fired power plants, which are increasingly vulnerable to failure.
The five-day gathering of the world’s elite officially kicked off on Monday with the theme “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.”
Elon Musk, the most talked-about billionaire on the planet, said he would stay away because the event — which features dozens and dozens of panel discussions on issues ranging from monetary policy and geopolitical hotspots to renewable energies and public health — “looked boring.”
However, organizers say more than 1,500 business leaders from all industries will be in attendance, including top managers from Microsoft, Uber, Pfizer, Saudi Aramco, and a slew of financial institutions.
Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff, who sits on the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, will attend after making headlines for cutting 10% of the company’s workforce, which amounts to thousands of employees.
The World Economic Forum has long been a place to promote global trade and open markets – both of which have come under great pressure since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Davos is being dominated by inflation and a looming global recession this time around. 56 finance ministers, 30 trade ministers and 19 central bank chiefs participate. But here, too, big names were missing from the program, such as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will speak as well as former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The subject of the 99-year-old is “Historical Perspectives on War.”
But star investor George Soros, a celebrity regular at Davos and a major proponent of globalization, is traveling to the conflict-focused Munich Security Conference next month instead.