ZURICH (Reuters) –
Political leaders and central bankers will dominate this
week's annual Davos forum as a chastened business elite is sidelined
in the drive to reboot the world economy, improve global security
and slow climate
change.
More than 40
heads of state and
government -- almost double the number
last year -- will be joined by 36
finance ministers
and central bankers, including the
central bank chiefs
of all the G8 group of rich countries except the United States.
About 1,400 business executives will also be
in Davos but fewer top bankers and captains of industry are expected
as they struggle to keep their businesses afloat -- and
themselves in a job, mindful of the event's glitzy image in more
austere times.
Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin will open the four-day meeting on Wednesday
in the Swiss Alpine resort that is being organized under the title
"Shaping the Post-Crisis world." Also
present will be Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
Japanese Prime
Minister Taro Aso and
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as well as
Valerie Jarrett,
a senior adviser to new U.S. President Barack Obama.
It is
the first time world
leaders will get together to discuss the deepening crisis
since a meeting of the G20 group of big and emerging countries in
Washington in November.
A WEF report
ahead of the meeting said the main risks
facing the world
included deteriorating government finances, a
slowing Chinese economy and threats to food and health from
climate change,
along with a lack of global coordination to tackle them.
Klaus Schwab, the forum's founder and chairman, said the
meeting would be a chance for leaders to think
about the kind of world they wanted to see emerge when the crisis is
over. "What we are
experiencing is the birth of a new era, a wake-up call to overhaul
our institutions, our systems and, above all, our way of thinking,"
he said.
