From left to right, Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Treasury secretary, Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), attend a panel session on the closing day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020.
Bloomberg
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
The World Economic Forum announced on Wednesday that it decided to postpone its upcoming annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland out of an abundance of caution regarding Covid-19.
The meeting, originally scheduled for January 2021, will be rescheduled to “early next summer,” according to Adrian Monck, managing director of public engagement at the Forum.
“The decision was not taken easily, since the need for global leaders to come together to design a common recovery path and shape the ‘Great Reset’ in the post-COVID-19 era is so urgent,” Monck said in a press release.
“However, the advice from experts is what we cannot do so safely in January,” he added.
The World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos is routinely one of the globe’s largest collections of world leaders and corporate executives. This year’s gathering, which took place over four days starting Jan. 21, featured commentary from President Donald Trump, European Central Bank President Christine Legarde and climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The 2020 conference also included Wall Street and finance bigwigs, and counted among its ranks billionaire George Soros, hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio.
The World Economic Forum also announced Wednesday that, instead of the in-person session, it will host a “high-level,” digital forum called “Davos Dialogues” during the week of January 25. Monck explained that the platform will feature global leaders and offer them a chance to present ideas on the state of the world in 2021.
The organization said details on the new dates and location of the rescheduled in-person Forum will be made available “as soon as we are assured that all conditions are fulfilled to guarantee the healthy and safety of our participants and the hosting community.”
