WEF/Annual Meeting/1998

Davos, Switzerland

 WEF/Annual Meeting/1998(WEF/Annual Meeting)

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File:Klaus Schwab Hillary Clinton.png Klaus Schwab; Hillary Clinton, US First Lady
Date	January 1998
Location	Davos, Switzerland
Description	At Davos, reforming the global financial system was the main concern in the Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders
Planners	WEF
Participants	Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, Sadako Ogata, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Hillary Clinton, Flavio Cotti, Richard von Weizsäcker, Helmut Kohl, Thabo Mbeki, Eduardo Frei, Carlos Saúl Menem, Nawaz Sharif, Yuan Baohua, Yevgeny Primakov, Joseph Ejercito Estrada, Desmond Tutu, Masoumeh Ebtekar, Larry Summers, Newt Gingrich, Bill Richardson, Jeff Bezos, Rahul Bajaj, Li Lanqing, Larry Ellison, Gro Harlem Brundtland,Ulrich Bettermann

The 1998 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting was held in Davos, Switzerland in January 1998.

Own words

Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was the Rapporteur, wrote how:

One of the least known, but most influential meetings at the Annual Meeting is the IGWEL, or the Informal Group of World Economic Leaders. It is a private assembly of heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, heads of international organizations and other invited persons. IGWEL holds three informal sessions during the course of the meeting and sets its own agenda. As every year, the Rapporteur summarizes the discussions for the press....Within the Informal Group, some warned against the concept of global governance because it could easily be misinterpreted.

At Davos, reforming the global financial system was the main concern in the Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders (IGWEL). In the wake of the financial crisis then affecting emerging markets, particularly Asia, participants emphasized the need to include major developing countries into the process. One idea was to set up a body to include 20 countries – half developed economies and the other developing ones. Just such a meeting of what became known as the G20 was held in Bonn, Germany, later in 1998. Participation was restricted to finance ministers and its scope limited to global finance. In subsequent years, Klaus Schwab, among others, proposed to elevate the G20 meeting to a summit. This finally happened in 2008.

The Club of Media Leaders is a group of leading editors and commentators from the world's most important publications and media organizations who meet together privately on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting. During the two-day private meeting among peers, the Media Leaders discuss issues at the top of their agenda for the coming year and meet with some of the most prominent political and business leaders who are in Davos for the Annual Meeting.