Sun, Jan 30, 2005 page12

• Is the World Economic Forum's junket what it was?

  The annual Davos summit used to be about making the world work better; some claim it is now little more than a dining experience for A-list celebrities

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  The Rolls Royce of business conferences glides to its conclusion in Davos today, capping a week of stimulating, high-minded discourse that makes the gathering such a hot ticket each year among chief executives, politicians, academics, journalists, the nonprofit set and the occasional celebrity.

  Look, there's Angelina Jolie! Angelina, how is the world faring on the health and human rights fronts? Oh my gosh, it's Bono! Bono, what needs to be done about African poverty? Hey, Richard Gere and Sharon Stone, how can we tackle the AIDS crisis?

  But this 34th annual conference of the World Economic Forum also scored 23 heads of state, 72 Cabinet-level ministers, and about 500 global business leaders. Among the attendees were Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain; Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman; Viktor A. Yushchenko, the new president of Ukraine; Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Google co-founders; former President Bill Clinton; Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the US Senate majority leader; and the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

  Amid the panel discussions on global crises, technological innovation and effective management was a seminar, scheduled for yesterday, on "Star Power and Social Change." The literature for that one stated that "celebrities have become powerful advocates for social, political and economic causes" and asked this tough follow-up question: "What accounts for this trend?" (For executives who do not want to shell out US$37,600 in annual membership fees and charges to attend next year's panel, here is one possible four-word answer: because they are sexy.)

  It is easy, of course, to take potshots at the forum, perhaps the only conference that bills itself as "Committed to Improving the State of the World." The world is, after all, a very big place. It is also easy to poke fun at a conference that advises invitees to monitor their own greenhouse gas emissions: The forum provided a handy formula to determine how much carbon dioxide each guest was likely to produce during the week.

  Yet the Davos conference is not so easily dismissed. This year's agenda, gathered under the theme of "Taking Responsibility for Tough Choices," required attendees to consider topics as wide-ranging as world trade, pollution, poverty, globalization, American leadership, Islam and the Middle East, China's meteoric economic ascent, corporate governance, AIDS and other health care issues, financial corruption and weapons of mass destruction.

  Moreover, many of the forum's 2,250 participants appeared to be fully engaged by its spirit and goals. Gere gave one of the gathering's most informed and passionate speeches addressing the AIDS crisis. Stone deployed her star power to great effect on Friday, rallying attendees at a poverty seminar to contribute US$1 million to fight malaria in Tanzania. But beyond the high-caliber guest list, ambitious agenda, breathtaking Alpine setting and extraordinary food and wine, does the forum amount to anything more than Oscar-worthy hobnobbing?

  "If we didn't exist someone would need to create us," said Klaus Schwab, the forum's founder and executive chairman. "Global challenges are not solved by business alone, by politics alone, by not-for-profits alone. They are solved by collaboration, and it requires a multi-stakeholder platform."

  Business leaders, by far the forum's dominant cohort, as well as some academics and nonprofit leaders who attended, said the quality of the discussions made the event worthwhile.

  The forum also allowed for those random moments when Michael Dell, the Dell Inc. founder, was suddenly standing next to you at the urinals; when Craig O. McCaw, the cell phone service pioneer, gently sidled up next to you at a reception; or when the currency speculator George Soros and the political guru David Gergen were at your shoulder, deep in conversation.

  "Obviously, I see value in the conference," said N.R. Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys Technologies of India and co-chairman of this year's forum. "I don't know of any other conference that brings together politicians, artists, brilliant physicists, Nobel laureate winners and spiritual leaders.

  "At Infosys we have a saying: `You can disagree with me as long as you're not disagreeable.' And to me, Davos represents that. If you are open-minded you listen to others, and if you listen to others you become more open-minded."

  But some of the forum's critics say that the reasons for attendance are less lofty. Activists have zeroed in on the forum in recent years, saying that the meeting's emphasis on free markets and free trade amount to camp counseling for money-grubbers. Others say that most participants jockey hard for invitations so that they can have access to one-of-a-kind networking opportunities or lucrative business deals, not because they want to promote social change.

  "It's rich and powerful folks licking each other from top to toe and feeling good about it," said Andrew Hilton, director of the Center for the Study of Financial Innovation, a London organization that analyzes financial risks and opportunities. "Davos used to be good, but now it's overstuffed and postprandial because it's protecting privilege rather than finding new opportunities. It doesn't have that hunger anymore."

  Conceding with a chuckle that his critique may stem from "sour grapes because I've never been invited," Hilton also said the forum was more than a retreat for the high and mighty. "It gets sort of slogged off as a gabfest, but it's terribly intense," he said. "Klaus Schwab is a genius and he's the Bill Gates of symposiums because he's invented Davos Man and Davos Man rules the world; it's capitalism without frontiers."
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