Davos again laments loss of forum for global elite

For the second year in a row, the World Economic Forum scrapped its annual meeting in the Alpine resort town of Davos, Switzerland, because of the pandemic.

The gathering is an essential stop on the annual circuit for the global elite, a weeklong schmoozefest where billionaires and autocrats mingle while activists protest in the frigid mountain air. Companies make climate pledges. Economists discuss inequality. Everyone

walks on the same slippery, slushy roads.

It was at the January 2020 annual meeting that many executives and world leaders first heard about the coronavirus, as news reports about a mysterious illness began to trickle out of Wuhan, China. Last year, the forum abandoned Davos and planned to hold the meeting in Singapore during the summer, but the Singapore event was canceled, too.

This year’s event had been scheduled to begin Monday and proceed more or less as usual.

Multinational corporations were renting out suites in luxury hotels. Dinner party invitations were being sent. Then in December, with the omicron variant spreading rapidly, the organizers said they had decided to postpone the gathering once more, with hopes of staging it this summer instead.

“Everyone hopes that in 2022 the COVID-19 pandemic, and the crises that accompanied it, will finally begin to recede,” Klaus Schwab, the patrician founder of the World Economic Forum, said in a statement

Thursday.

So far, however, there is little sign that the pandemic is beginning to wane. And for a second year in a row, with Davos the event on hold, Davos the town is stuck in limbo.

Before the pandemic, “Davos” came to connote not simply the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum itself, but a state of mind. Pro-capitalism, pro-democracy, pro-globalization, Davos is the spiritual home of the stakeholder capitalism movement (which encourages companies to be better corporate citizens) and a testing ground for any number of new win-win market-oriented solutions to combat climate change, ameliorate hunger and repair frayed international relations.

Besides delivering Switzerland a helping of cultural cachet, the annual meeting is a major source of revenue. The 2020 meeting contributed about $120 million to the Swiss economy, according to a study by the University of St. Gallen.