World Economic Forum: Is Davos Too Small for its Flagship Event?

Senior executives at the World Economic Forum are weighing whether the organisation’s flagship annual meeting needs to change location, fearing the event has outgrown its traditional Alpine venue in Davos. Larry Fink, BlackRock chair and interim co-chair of the WEF’s governing board, has privately discussed options including moving the summit permanently from Davos or using venues on a rotational basis. Among the locations discussed were Detroit and Dublin. Fink wants to reshape the forum, which has been widely criticised as too elitist and out of touch, saying access should extend beyond the political and business leaders who usually attend its events, according to four people familiar with the talks. The WEF should “start doing something new: showing up — and listening — in the places where the modern world is actually built”, Fink said in a blog post on Monday. “Davos, yes. But also places like Detroit and Dublin — and cities like Jakarta and Buenos Aires.” While the WEF’s leadership continues to reaffirm Davos, the Swiss ski resort that has hosted the annual meeting for nearly six decades, as the event’s spiritual and practical home, there had also been internal acknowledgment of the setting’s increasing logistical and strategic challenges, two of the people added. The WEF “has outgrown” its capacity, said one senior executive who waited in traffic for three and a half hours to enter the small skiing village for this week’s shindig. The debate over the location of the global gathering comes as the forum has evolved far beyond its early identity as a club for European management elites. Now the five-day summit regularly attracts tens of thousands of participants — both official invitees, including heads of state and executives from business and civil society, as well as the informal “houses” hosted by governments, companies and lobbying groups along Davos’s promenade and side streets. “It has become a victim of its own success,” said one person familiar with the conversations. Accommodation shortages, security costs and the limited physical infrastructure — a record attendance has already been reported for the current event — have been acknowledged by WEF officials as problematic. US President Donald Trump’s arrival on Wednesday is expected to further complicate the logistical challenges surrounding the summit. “It is important to the Swiss government that the WEF retains strong ties to Switzerland,” one of the people said, who added that keeping it in Europe was a priority for many senior forum executives. The discussions coincide with senior leadership changes at the WEF, with Fink and Roche vice-chair André Hoffmann stepping in as interim chairs of the governing board in August. WEF founder Klaus Schwab stepped down in April amid whistleblower allegations about financial misconduct and other governance problems. Last year’s investigation cleared Schwab of misconduct, finding no material wrongdoing or criminal conduct but some “irregularities”. But the saga forced a new page in the forum’s history, which has prompted the interim management to consider its future plans amid criticism it has lost relevance and caters too much to the elite. It is not the first time relocating the forum’s annual meetings has been suggested, while Schwab had also looked extensively at relocating the forum’s headquarters to Dubai several years ago. Officially, the forum remains supportive of Davos. WEF directors have publicly stressed the historical significance of the Alpine location, which also brings in crucial tourism revenue and investment. The Swiss government and some of its leading companies would also be likely to resist any move to relocate. “The Swiss would be very against a relocation: that will create hurdles,” a WEF official said, adding that any move “is not definite”. BlackRock and WEF did not respond to requests for comment.