Forget about fondue.
Caviar, magic mushrooms, gold-leaf desserts, top-notch selfies, $2,500-a-night prostitutes, and secret dinners are likely to be on the menu as scores of private jets fly into Switzerland on Sunday, taking the world's elite with them. to land. Officially known as the 2024 World Economic Forum, it will be held in the small Alpine resort city of Davos.
More than 3,000 masters of the universe are expected to attend the 54th annual event at the Alpine resort located in the snow-covered Landwasser Valley.This year's theme is “Rebuilding trust”
“When you're there, you can smell the magic of the place,” one well-connected Davos regular told the Post.
“Everyone has an agenda, and you never know who you're going to run into when you come out of the bathroom. It could be Bill Gates.
“You have the smartest people in the world around you, but one of the things you learn is that they aren't always that smart.”
Klaus Schwab, head of the WEF, is portrayed in far-right circles as a real-life Dr. Evil, but he is probably more akin to a high-rent PT Barnum than an evil global conspiracy theorist.
last year Vanity Fair magazine points out “We have evolved the Forum from an impassioned meeting of policy geeks to a glittering gathering of the world's wealthiest people,” Schwab said. He accomplished this by co-opting those who exercised power, especially the billionaire class, a tribe known as the Davos men. ”
However, not all men or women at Davos are created equal. There is a caste system that distinguishes between those who are simply connected and the top of the elite.
Everyone is required to wear a colored badge with their full name on it at all times, and color is a way to instantly determine one's importance. (The actual flex is to hide the badge because it's so famous.)
The White Badge is the most expensive certification, but it is also available only to the highest-ranking business leaders.
Being a CEO isn't enough. Your company should be a well-known name, or at least a well-known name in the largest boardrooms.
Anthony Scaramucci, founder and chairman of SkyBridge Capital, which has been attending Davos since 2007, told the Post, “If you look up name drop in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of Davos.”
“But you know what? I never left the mountains without learning something important or making new friends.”
Other, more humble badges in rainbow colors are given to the cronies of white badge holders. For less important CEOs and nonprofit heads. To the media. To WEF staff. and a large staff to cater to their needs.
Political figures such as Chinese Premier Li Qiang. French President Emmanuel Macron. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. and press. Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, will be vying for invitations to the year's best cocktail parties.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agrees. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. Argentina's new president, Javier Millay. Supermodel Naomi Campbell. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization. and Tirana Hassan of Human Rights Watch.
Davos attendees past and present prefer to talk about the rich “policy debates” at snowy conferences, but real A-listers compete for the best low-key cocktail parties and private dinners with top CEOs. , then hit the dance floor with the Salesforce CEO. Marc Benioff.
Trying to attend the most high-profile CEO dinners is an annual ritual, but the headache for private dinner organizers is that this year JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Mr. Altman are among the most in attendance. The idea is to have high-profile corporate guests attend.
Badges help set the tone for the evening.
For most, the evening means crowded cocktail parties, extravagant caviar-studded canapés served with champagne, and opportunities to take selfies with celebrities over the years, from Matt Damon to Priyanka Chopra. There's a line. They have to stand up and listen to a speech from perhaps one of the organizations hosting it.
Both the private dining and cocktail scenes come together for private performances by world-famous artists such as Lenny Kravitz, Coldplay's Chris Martin, and the Black Eyed Peas.
Nile Rodgers, will.i.am, cool & dre He is expected to appear again this year.
Yahoo's Marissa Mayer used to host the big names, but now Benioff is in charge of booking the acts and, like Mayer, eager to hit the dance floor.
Scaramucci is once again hosting his wine “soirée,” this time at the Hotel Europa.
His wine list includes the relatively affordable $260 per bottle Laurent-Perrier No. 26 Grand Siècle Champagne for bubbles fans, but the $802 per bottle Domaine Comte Georges de Vogués from Burgundy Bonne Mar Grand Cru 2005 will be the best wine. Bordeaux, 2003 Château Latour, Pauillac, retails for $995 a bottle.
Matt Damon, Goldie Hawn, Richard Branson, Andrea Bocelli and now first lady Jill Biden have been named in bold at Mr. Scaramucci's past parties, but it remains to be seen who will show up until the last minute. He said he didn't know.
Scaramucci said he has not yet heard details about whether Dimon will hold his own event. “I'm not on that list anyway!!” he said.
Last year, Scaramucci faced competition from more exotic substances, with psychedelic companies offering trace amounts of magic mushrooms to delegates and Deepak Chopra speaking. I won't be coming back this year.
Of course, as has been the case for years, the specter of Jeffrey Epstein also hangs over Davos. This year, JP Morgan's star banker Mary Erdos is expected to win.
She has dealt with Epstein since he was first convicted, and has been warned at least six times about suspicious activity by him, and has also sought tax advice from him. Her Campbell has her own ties to Epstein. Her name was included in recently dropped unsealed documents regarding the late disgraced investor.
“Davos has always had a bit of a dark side,” said another Davos attendee who has attended the conference twice in recent years. “You know what they say about world leaders and the best CEOs being psychopaths.”
For example, in 2016, former Tradeshift CEO Christian Lang, then 45, was fired last year for allegedly forcing his assistants to sign “slave contracts.” I took a photo with actor Kevin Spacey. The alleged victim later accused Lang of torturing her while the two were in Davos. He denies the charges.
Even though it's new Research by Salesforce The results suggest that a surprising majority of Gen Z are supporters of Davos. “Anti-WEF” I don't have it.
“More condemnation from the big-city elites who brought us war, a cost-of-living crisis, woke obsessions, and dysfunctional public services,” the group bellowed in a text to the Post.
“Once again, people who think of themselves as great and good people gather in Davos to raise their families, deal with the horrors of world conflict, and make the world more businesslike while ignoring the problems facing real people.” We talk about how to give our children a better life…They're not offering anything that will improve the world.”
In fact, apart from some consensus-building, it is difficult to say what concrete results will emerge from Davos.
“This is above my pay grade,” said one longtime observer.
