Media hypocrites fall big time for Davos and JP Morgan

Ihad my first fall yesterday. Slipping and sliding on the icy streets of Davos is an occupational hazard at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, but I’d managed to avoid it the first three days. Then, hurrying along to another meeting with my mind elsewhere, I hit a patch of ice and before you could say “sustainable development goals” I was flat on my backside on the pavement. It was not serious, and there was nothing damaged apart from my dignity, but it got me thinking on how easy it is to slip up at Davos — to make the wrong decision that puts you in the wrong place at the wrong time, where you miss that vital meeting or chance encounter that could just provide the gem of news or information that “makes” Davos.

It had happened the evening before. I misread a road sign, took a long and needles detour, and ended up at the promising event

— where I was planning to button-hole a leading and very newsworthy banker — just as the global elite were leaving. A small slip up, and a missed opportunity.

There were no such mistakes last night, however. I planned to get to the JP Morgan evening reception, and I was one of the first at the doors of the Kirchner Museum — the funky art hub of Davos — when they opened at 7 p.m. If any bank symbolizes the “global elite” it is JPM. The biggest bank in America, it has just reported record profits of $8.5 billion, and paid its CEO Jamie Dimon an eye-watering $31.5 million for leading it to such abundance.

JPM is also a great friend of Saudi Arabia, having been involved in financing the oil industry since the very beginning, and playing a leading role in the Aramco IPO. So the soiree in the Kirchner ticked a lot of Davos boxes. It was by far the most extravagant affair I’d been to at Davos 2020. On entry, there stood Dimon himself, alongside his high paid adviser Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, receiving guests in a version of a royal meet-and-greet line up. A long queue of people stood patiently for he opportunity to get a selfie with the pair.

Inside were some of the biggest names in global finance, as well as a big cross-section of the power-celebs who flock to Davos. Anthony Scaramucci, the former communications adviser to US President Donald Trump, who had hosted his own bash a few nights earlier in the Europa Hotel just down the Promenade, was in the thick of it, and loving every minute. The global elite rubbed shoulders with the glamorous and the glitterati in a whirl of drinks, canapés and techno-music.

And the journalists, of course. There were representatives from virtually all the big western media brands — the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the lot.

Every one of these titles had written articles in the pervious few days essentially writing Davos off, either as climate-change denying irrelevance, or as an ineffective talking shop, or as a gang of elitist exploiters. “Davos has a credibility problem,” proclaimed the NYT earlier in the week.

Yet all the hacks at the JPM bash seemed prepared to suspend their disbelief for a couple of hours of schmoozing with the global elite they had been attacking a short time before. The huge media hubs at the WEF — some took over big areas of the Belvedere Steinberger hotel across the road from the Kirchner — were further evidence of the media hypocrisy about Davos. They say they hate it, but just cannot stay away.