A roundup of all the best financial news and analysis coming out of the World Economic Forum, which kicks off tomorrow in Davos, Switzerland.
Who actually goes to Davos?: Before getting to which bankers are saying what at Davos, it might help to figure out who is actually tucked away up there in the Alps this year. The Financial Times does that with a rather cool database that dissects the demographics of the delegates. Delegates can be searched by industry, company/organization, job title, country, etc.
Who doesn’t go to Davos: New York Times finance ace Andrew Ross Sorkin looks at the other end of the attendance spectrum: business luminaries who either never go to Davos or aren’t going this year. Particularly interesting are the contrasting perspectives of PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian and Blackrock’s Laurence Fink.
Dimon, other Western bankers out in the snow: Bloomberg details how JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon is stepping back from the spotlight this year. Dimon is still heading to Davos, but he is not making any public appearances. While the article opens with Dimon, it goes on to cover the role other bank executives will play and the seemingly diminished stature of Western bankers in particular: “There are no Western bankers among the co-chairs of this year’s annual meeting. The slot held previously by UBS AG Chairman Axel Weber, Dimon and Standard Chartered Plc CEO Peter Sands is being filled by Jiang Jianqing, chairman of Industrial &Commercial Bank of China Ltd. Jiang, 60, is the first Chinese banker to be a co-chairman of the annual meeting. The World Economic Forum leadership role held by ICBC, the world’s most profitable bank, reflects the increasing influence of China’s state-controlled banks, which have added more assets since the 2008 crisis than are in the U.S. banking system.”
Wednesday’s hot Wall Street panel: TIME’s Rana Foroohar teases the “Are Markets Safer Now?” panel set to take place Wednesday.
You can never get enough snow on live TV: I am not talking about the storm coverage on the East Coast, I am talking about Davos. The conference hasn’t even started, but that hasn’t stopped the cable news networks from broadcasting among the snow-covered trees. CNBC chats with Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff about threats to the global economy. Bloomberg got Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to discuss global markets and issues with public trust that banks are still trying to overcome.
Yawn!: Bloomberg’s Peter Coy gets coy with his light take on the challenge Davos delegates face avoiding (or hiding) the Davos Nap.