Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

WEF meeting shifted to New York

BS Political Bureau

The events of September 11 have had an unexpected fall-out. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, normally held every year January-end at the Alpine ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, will now take place in New York instead.

The Waldorf-Astoria, the famous landmark hotel in New York has been selected as the venue for the meeting.

A WEF spokesperson, when contacted, declined to comment, saying that an official statement on the venue of the forthcoming annual WEF meeting would be issued on Wednesday.

The decision to shift the venue of the meeting has been prompted by the WEF management’s growing realisation that most American business delegates and members of the academic community as well as think tanks are reluctant to fly across the Atlantic after the use of hijacked planes in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

In all previous annual meetings of WEF, not just leading businessmen and industrialists but also professors of economics, finance and management have been flown to Davos from the US to address WEF delegates.

Another reason prompting the change in the venue is the WEF management’s feeling that despite tough security laws and tougher police, the Swiss government might have a problem dealing with non-governmental organisations which created problems at the last annual WEF meeting in Davos.

Despite the fact that Davos is located in a relatively remote area in Switzerland, an NGO invasion is a palpable threat. Security breaches could be hard to handle if they are magnified or utilised by terrorist groups.

The WEF has leveraged the political significance of New York as the new venue for the meeting and the slowdown in the US economy to invite President George Bush to address the gathering.

Possibly for the first time, politics rather than economics will be the underlying leit motif of the gathering. So Bush will address the world from a forum that is internationally respected and aspired to, and the meeting will represent industry’s way of fighting back the threat of world terror.

Powered by

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:
The Rediff-Business Standard Special
The Budget 2001-2002 Special
Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report