When all roads lead to Davos, in charts

livemint.com:

Mint explores the nuts and bolts of Davos. To get to be a part of all this, a member company wanting to attend the world’s most-famous summit needs to splurge thousands of dollars for the week-long trip, which some have come to term as a “vacation" for the ultrarich.

Past research has found that participation in Davos does little to create share market value for these companies. The benefits are mostly reserved for executives in the form of networking and career progression.

Out of WEF’s hundreds of partner companies, only one comes from a low-income country (Yemen’s HSA Group). (These are the companies that fund the foundation through various membership tiers.) During 2008–2019, more than 75% of the attendees at the forum came from high-income nations.

Of the 1,009 companies listed as partners on the WEF website, 74% were based in rich countries and 17% in upper-middle-income ones, a Mint analysis showed. Over the years, ‘Davos Man’ has become a sobriquet for the typical white male corporate leader.

The forum has often been judged for its inability to provide an equal platform to women, as well as for the several delegates using private jets to attend the summit. That’s an ironic contradiction, since gender equality and climate change form major parts of WEF's agenda now.