The Firebreak’s Daily Davos Dump: Day 1
The Davos Survey (Global Risks Report): Where have all the Leaders Gone?
All this week the Firebreak will be reporting on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) flagship conference in Davos, Switzerland, known as the global meeting of leaders from businesses, foundations, NGOs and governments. Once described as the billionaires club, in the last decade the organization has tried to shift economic debates to the political arena, leaning to left, green agenda, promoting concepts like degrowth, ESG, conscious or stakeholder capitalism... With elections in 2024 shifting the political balance of power largely to the right, it will be interesting to see if and how the WEF will pivot, and if and how the media will report on it.
The Global Risks Report
A good indication of how these WEF strategists will take on these headwinds (a month after most large American banks and financial institutions abandoned many of the international carbon commitments and UN climate alliances) can be found in their Global Risks Report (also known as the Davos Survey) which tends to set the agenda for their week-long conference. Their 20th version was published on January 15, 2025, involving the following stakeholders:
“The report highlights the latest findings from our annual Global Risks Perception Survey, which this year brought together the collective intelligence of over 900 global leaders across academia, business, government, international organizations and civil society. It also leverages insights from some 100 thematic experts,...”
This year, the WEF’s key findings, in order of importance, are:
Increased global armed conflicts
Extreme weather events amplified by climate change
Widespread societal, economic and political polarization and confrontation
The increasing spread of false or misleading information.
This is what the leaders of the business world are also, apparently, most concerned about. And this is concerning (see the table from the WEF report below).
To take it from another perspective, what our world’s economic and political leaders are not very worried about include: economic downturn (5%), cybercrimes (2%), asset bubble burst (1%), debt (1%), disruptions to critical infrastructure (1%), inflation (<1%) and talent/labor shortages (<1%).
If I were a risk manager running a large company or government, and I see a leader promising to massively increase the debt, pump up the equity markets and a central bank slowing the rate of interest rate cuts, these would be my critical concerns. The WEF did not consider global trade, tariffs and the collapse of the WTO system as a category of concern (grouping it, I assume, under the global polarization and confrontation where armed conflict seemed to be their main focus).
The first question to ask is whether the corporate business leaders who are going to Davos are actually leading or lamely validating a political agenda imposed by an academic elite working in a comfortable suburb in Geneva (as a trade-off for the chance to be seen rubbing shoulders with world leaders). Or are these CEOs unaware of the serious risks their businesses will be facing in the coming years? Do they really think misinformation and weather events are far greater risks than tariffs, trade wars and debt? Even insurance companies (one of the main groups driving the WEF’s strategy) surely must be aware of the data trends showing a significant drop in loss of lives and property from natural disasters and weather events over the last century.
A CEO of an international company should be expected to lead the business through the issues and challenges that will have the greatest impact on the company’s bottom line, employees, shareholders, consumers and communities where they operate. The business of business must, categorically, be the interests of the business (and not necessarily issues like weather events, wars or the rise of online disinformation). Being a moral leader is an assumed minimum but not the main feature of any leadership profile.
If leadership is allowed to be defined by the World Economic Forum’s values and concerns, then the business world is suffering from a crisis of leadership. Somewhere between Jack Welch and Brian Moynihan, corporate leadership shifted from risk-taking to precaution; from opportunism to fear of risks; from executive power to moral pontification. It is a good question how much of this narrative was shaped by the WEF (a club that would invite Greta Thunberg to speak, but not Elon Musk).
The WEF’s concept of a risk in their Global Risks Report is also terribly misguided. Businesses are preoccupied with the management of risks, where risks are defined not only by the threats they pose but also the opportunities they present. The WEF list puts stress on risks as threats (war, extreme weather, misinformation…) but many risks would also create opportunities. It is a reality that many corporations do well during war-time economies (although the academic elite abhor that idea). Climate or ecological issues create the opportunity for alternative technologies, innovations and new markets. Few CEOs would cite these issues as threats to their business. This leads then to the obvious question.
Who is Running this Davos Show?
If corporate CEOs are not defining the direction of the main global economic strategy conference, then who is? I smell consultants and communications professionals working the WEF room (I used to be both of these so it’s not too hard to spot). Marsh McLennan Europe was behind the production of the report (see a CNBC interview of its chief commercial officer, Carolina Klint, putting her own spin on what her report actually means). Journalists then cherry pick from the spin to enhance their own agenda. The same CNBC report chose to stress extreme weather, climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as key conclusions from the WEF’s Davos Survey (assuming most people won’t read the actual results).
The Davos Survey has a special section (2.4) on their concerns of biotechnology. This did not show up in the actual survey and I could imagine business leaders seeing opportunity in biotech applications across all fields (white, red, green and blue biotech) but I suspect the WEF architects of the study decided to group this valuable technology with bio-weapons and cyber threats. This is a good example of how the WEF elites are trying to impose their political agenda upon the global business and political leaders. I am sure during the conference, no one will dare speak out to defend biotechnology.
In the WEF’s press release to announce the conference in Davos, they put a stress on the different world leaders attending (from Donald to Volodymyr, although many are making virtual presentations) and only briefly mentioned that more than half of the invitees were business leaders. I suspect the organization is trying to pivot from a meeting of economic and business minds to the driving force to amplify post-capitalist world leaders. They seem to have higher ambitions, as the WEF press release sets out the Davos agenda:
“On climate, nature and energy, the meeting will build on the momentum from the three UN COPs on Climate, Land and Biodiversity in 2024 to scale the deployment of renewable energy, drive energy efficiencies while addressing energy demand, and protect and restore nature. The Forum will advance the work of key initiatives, including the Global Plastic Action Partnership, the Transitioning Industrial Clusters Initiative and the First Movers Coalition, and release new research outlining key strategies for industries and cities transitioning to a nature-positive future.”
Nice, another international organization in Switzerland with ambitions to dominate the global discourse with their jaded political agenda. If, this week, the World Economic Forum ignores the political realities of the last year to push their policy agenda, then no one should be surprised that this small secretariat would lose even more credibility.