Closing Accounts of the Davos Forum

The 33rd Annual Meeting of the World Economy Forum held at Davos, Switzerland, closed on the 28th after its 6 days of schedule.

During this year’s forum, with the theme ‘Building Trust’ and the participation of around 2,300 people of leaders of politics and economy from about 100 countries, issues over the lost trust in business and government due to the Enron Crisis and the accounting irregularities of the American companies as well as the outlook of this year’s world economy were discussed.

Actually, during the session on the ‘Business Management Structure’, active principles of calling the executives of the companies to account over the accounting supervision and establishing the strict transparency and responsibility of the accounting even in the advanced nations to reconstruct the transparent management structure, which is the basis of the trust on business.

“There is no magic solution to restore the public’s trust already lost. If there needs to be a solution to the discussion, this is it,” the executive directors stated with sigh when they exited the meeting room, however.

The criticism on the United States, the original place of the world globalization at the Davos Forum, which has been the leader in the world globalization, show that the changes took place at this year’s forum. One participant clarified that “it is because the Iraq War is the cause of the fall in the stock markets in this year’s world economy.” Actually, when the speech of Collin Powell, the Secretary of State of the United States finished on 26th, all the American leaders of politics and economy including Bill Gates, the President of Microsoft, arose to applaud but the response from the others were very cold. The appearance of Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, the President of Brazil, who is a laborer once, changed the atmosphere of the forum. Before the closure of the forum, George Mullincrot, the co founder of the Davos Forum, stated to the reporter, “I’m really concerned with the future of the forum. When we had our first meeting at Davos 33 years ago, it was a small gathering with European businessmen. However, as the forum’s size grew big like a snowball, it has floated down to where it hasn’t been predicted and no one knows the future of the forum now.”

The participants of the forum paid the enrollment fee of 100,000 dollars and the participation fee of 30,000 dollars. It is estimated that the total earned by the host organization is about 30 million dollars.

“Considering the opportunity to meet with the main leaders of the world politics and economy and to learn about the high quality business information, it is beneficial to participate in the forum”, stated one Korean participant. It goes the same for the criticism from the anti globalization movement organizations. They analyze that “the Davos Forum is where participants discuss about the world problems for a half-day and learn about the method of expanding their capitals for the rest of 5 days.” This is the reason why the forum cannot be discontinued even there are over flowing criticism on the forum.

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