Lavish parties thrown by top Wall Street bankers used to be the talk of the annual Davos forum but the economic crisis has forced belt tightening this year.
The number of A-list bankers who will debate the global turmoil at the World Economic Forum starting today has been cut and many financial institutions have slashed their entertainment budget.
Caviar and lobster are out and ham and cheese are in for receptions at luxury Davos hotels such as the Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvedere where white wine and cheaper champagnes are replacing Dom Perignon, media reports say.
John Thain, former Merrill Lynch chief, was scheduled to debate the future of the global financial system, according to a WEF program circulated last week.
But he resigned from Bank of America, which bought Merrill Lynch on Thursday and Thain’s name was dropped from the latest list of forum participants.
Goldman Sachs, renowned for its Davos parties, is not holding one this year. The bank’s chief operating officer Gary Cohn is on the Davos list, but chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is not.
Likewise, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit is not attending, and Lehman Brothers, usually a prominent presence at Davos, has folded since economic storm clouds started gathering over last year’s event.
JP Morgan, led by its CEO James Dimon, will be left leading Wall Street’s depleted delegation this year.
Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung reported recently that budgets for receptions were being cut by 30 percent, quoting Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvedere chief Ernst Wyrsch.
Marc Demisch, general manager at the Central Sporthotel said a bank that used to host two events at its restaurants has opted for just one event this year.
Another private event will see 25 percent budget cutback, with “wine that is about 10-15 francs cheaper,” he said.
“We will probably make a little less than last year, a maximum of 5 percent less on food and beverages, but not tremendously less,” said Demisch.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, a professor at the IMD business school, said Davos was founded on the “dogma of business leadership” which in recent months has been choking on fallout from the credit crisis fallout.
“There was always a certain element of evangelism capitalism during previous years’ Davos. You don’t get fundamental debate on the system,” he said.
The gaps left by the diminishing teams of bankers are more than made up for by politicians and policymakers.
With the capitalist world suffering its worst battering since the Great Depression, the words of China’s Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will dominate the start of the elite five-day meeting.
Putin, Wen, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are all to lecture the forum on how crashing economies can be saved.
Russia and China have a chance to monopolize attention since no top policymaker from President Barack Obama’s new US administration agreed to go to Davos.
Meanwhile, Bono is too busy so Chinese martial arts movie star Jet Li (李連杰) and the king of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan will be providing the glamour counterweight to politicians at this year’s Davos forum.
Bono “has a day job too,” World Economic Forum spokesman Mark Adams said, explaining why the U2 frontman would not be attending this year’s gathering in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
The Irish rock star has been at the past three forums campaigning for the poor and the environment, but this year is busy recording a new album with his group, Adams said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such