Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello, listeners of in the City.
Speaker 3: This is David Merritt here bringing you another bonus episode
Speaker 3: from our coverage at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Speaker 3: On the sidelines of the conference, I sat down with
Speaker 3: Tiery Mallaree. Tieri is an economist who's worked as an
Speaker 3: advisor for major investment banks and governments, and he also
Speaker 3: has a long history with the World Economic Forum. He
Speaker 3: founded and headed the Global Risk Network at WEF, and
Speaker 3: for a number of years in succession he conceded and
Speaker 3: put in place the program for the annual Davos meeting
Speaker 3: where we are this week. He's also now an author,
Speaker 3: known for co writing COVID nineteen, The Great Reset with
Speaker 3: the founder of the Forum himself, Cloud Schwab, but also
Speaker 3: some very interesting fiction more recently, including Deaths at Davos,
Speaker 3: a thriller in a place loosely familiar but not actually
Speaker 3: the World Economic Forum. And now we have Deaths at
Speaker 3: Davos two point zero, a dark satire of what's really
Speaker 3: going on within the World Economic Forum.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the City of London.
Speaker 4: The City in the City of London, Man mind.
Speaker 1: Between and the Financial Heart of the country, the city,
Speaker 1: the city.
Speaker 4: Welcome to in the city.
Speaker 2: Clear of the dawn, Tierry, Welcome to in the city.
Speaker 4: So good David, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Thank you for spending some time in this year. We're
Speaker 3: sitting in Davos. The snow is falling outside. This is
Speaker 3: a place that you know very very well. Indeed, so
Speaker 3: I want to come up talk about your book, of course,
Speaker 3: but just dialing it back, just tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about your involvement in this place, because I want
Speaker 3: to understand from your perspective, how has the World Economic
Speaker 3: Forum evolved from its kind of original core mission to
Speaker 3: what we have around us today.
Speaker 2: Take us back to the beginning.
Speaker 4: Sure, So I was an employee of the World Going
Speaker 4: to Make Forum from two thousand to two thousand and seven.
Speaker 4: I was first in charge of Davos for three or
Speaker 4: four years, and then I created the Global Risk Network,
Speaker 4: which is a publication that is issued a week before
Speaker 4: DeVos measuring global risk as seen from the perspective of
Speaker 4: Global CEOs members of what are Going to Make Forum.
Speaker 4: And then I left, but I stayed in touch with
Speaker 4: class Web and I wrote sort of books with him.
Speaker 3: So Class Writer, in case anybody listening doesn't know Clausschweb
Speaker 3: is the World Economic Forum, isn't he?
Speaker 4: That's his creature.
Speaker 2: It's his creature, his creation, absolutely hard to imagine it
Speaker 2: without him.
Speaker 3: Just tell us a little bit about him as a
Speaker 3: figure and how important he is to this gathering.
Speaker 4: Is absolutely vital to the gathering. I think this is
Speaker 4: a fifty fifth edition if I'm not mistaken. So he
Speaker 4: created what I going to make from fifty five years ago.
Speaker 4: It's very much his creature. He's been at the Helm
Speaker 4: ever since the organization was founded. Is now it is
Speaker 4: six He's still in charge, He's on stage. He's still
Speaker 4: on stage despite having relinquished his rule as executive chairman,
Speaker 4: but is the chairman of the foundation board, which is
Speaker 4: the which is a body that dictate what's going to
Speaker 4: make from is all about. So yes, he's very much
Speaker 4: a person in charge. That's his baby.
Speaker 2: It's his baby.
Speaker 3: And he still persuades people to travel from all around
Speaker 3: the world. I mean this discussion about and we were
Speaker 3: talking a bit about this odia, this debate about how
Speaker 3: relevant is the World Economic Forum? Why travel to Switzerland
Speaker 3: and anuary in the prison called is it because of
Speaker 3: the the ability to actually be in person. That is
Speaker 3: still necessary. Why does this meeting still have relevance today?
Speaker 4: Because when I joined the Forum, the motto was still
Speaker 4: very much as a driving force, committed to improving the
Speaker 4: state of the world.
Speaker 2: That's the message.
Speaker 4: That's a state, right, I don't think it has any
Speaker 4: validity any longer. Now the water can make Forum in
Speaker 4: Davos and in other places has become the mother of
Speaker 4: all platforms. Everybody comes because that's a place where you
Speaker 4: do business. It's a fantastical efficient platform. If your business,
Speaker 4: you come because you're going to meet your suppliers, your customers,
Speaker 4: your regulators, the central bankers, the head of state of
Speaker 4: the countries in reach' do the business. If you're the
Speaker 4: head of state, you are meeting your peers, the companies
Speaker 4: that do business in your country. So everybody has an
Speaker 4: incentive to attend because it's remarkable efficient as a platform.
Speaker 4: You meet everybody in a week.
Speaker 3: But that's the incentive is efficiency. It's doing business, it's
Speaker 3: doing deal. So that's quite different to improving the state
Speaker 3: of the World's totally different.
Speaker 4: I think improving the state of the world is become
Speaker 4: you're right.
Speaker 3: In the state of your balance sheet or your bottom line.
Speaker 3: Should they shift it to that?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's what that's one of the points we develop
Speaker 4: in the book. You right about in the book. Absolutely
Speaker 4: it's about improving the pian ling the.
Speaker 2: P and L. But that's real, right, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it's very real.
Speaker 4: And again, hats off to Cloud throughout and the organization
Speaker 4: for having succeeded in in managing these transformations.
Speaker 2: And it's not it's not a cheap thing to come to,
Speaker 2: is it that us?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're sitting in an apartment with
Speaker 3: the Bloomberg studio set up here, but people are renting
Speaker 3: out their apartments for huge amounts of money. That the
Speaker 3: prices for the hotels are astronomical, restaurant bookings are really
Speaker 3: helped to come back and getting here and being part
Speaker 3: of this is an investment, isn't it.
Speaker 4: It is an investment and companies come because they generates
Speaker 4: a good return on the investment. Yeah, everything, as you said,
Speaker 4: is obscenely expensive, expensive, and yet people come why because
Speaker 4: they generated a good return.
Speaker 3: And it's not just so all the stuff that happens
Speaker 3: on stage, you know. So there's the conference center, Klaus
Speaker 3: Schwab holding Court, World Leaders Business titans conducting conversations. It's
Speaker 3: all the stuff that happens outside the confent center, isn't
Speaker 3: It's the parties, It's the drinks parties. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: just been here. You know, it's Thursday today. All week
Speaker 3: the chatter is around what things are people getting invited to.
Speaker 3: Every corporation, every organized it seems to be hosting some
Speaker 3: sort of party. Has that always been the case? Has
Speaker 3: it always been about the kind of the networking and
Speaker 3: the kind of the late case.
Speaker 4: When I was when I was in Toroid of Davers
Speaker 4: or twenty years ago, things were about one thousand private
Speaker 4: events on the on the margin of the official event.
Speaker 4: Today it's very hard to measure this number, but you know,
Speaker 4: talking to different people this week, the tell needs could
Speaker 4: be between anything between two three and five thousand, wow,
Speaker 4: which I believe is real. For example, on Monday, I
Speaker 4: went to what I think is the most important for me,
Speaker 4: a private event in Doubles, which is a bit broader's dinner.
Speaker 4: So everybody who has an interest in Russia, which is
Speaker 4: my case, tends to participate in this private event. But
Speaker 4: Deal doesn't pay anymore. It is not a white badge
Speaker 4: because he's saying that it's not interesting for him to
Speaker 4: do so, but he has this remarkable dinner. And so
Speaker 4: every night you have got loose how many hundreds of dinners,
Speaker 4: not only doubles, in clusters in in Urich.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's that's the that's the HoTT a ticket,
Speaker 3: right to get an invite to one of these dinners
Speaker 3: where you will meet and have a sort of insight
Speaker 3: and conversation that actually is going to serve be better
Speaker 3: than going and listen to someone talking the conress.
Speaker 4: And every private company present in Douvos has its own dinner,
Speaker 4: lunch or or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just to explain if anyone does said, the
Speaker 3: bad system is this is the this is the sort
Speaker 3: of the pecking order at Davos.
Speaker 2: Right. The white badge is.
Speaker 3: The much coveted white that's for the one percent zero
Speaker 3: point one percenters, isn't it. So that's the CEOs, the
Speaker 3: my boss, he had a wie, and then you have
Speaker 3: the loadly hacks like me with an orange badge. Basically
Speaker 3: that's the media.
Speaker 2: So there are these.
Speaker 3: Different because I'm a badge, but you don't feel you
Speaker 3: need one, right because I can come here. Actually it's
Speaker 3: peripheral to Actually, you don't need to go into the
Speaker 3: conference center.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so many hungers on like me.
Speaker 3: Right, so you're at the bills ro out of dinner.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like you were right where you needed
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a bit about your book series. So I'm
Speaker 2: so fascinated by this.
Speaker 3: You worked at the web for years, you have been
Speaker 3: very much an insider in this institution and its growth,
Speaker 3: and you've written a book where we've got your second
Speaker 3: book novel here. First one, Death's at Davos. We now
Speaker 3: have Deaths at Davos two point zero. Tell us about
Speaker 3: the story. It's a thriller set at this forum. Tell
Speaker 3: us about the idea and what happens to the book.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, a word of warning, it's a
Speaker 4: it's a fictional place because the thriller takes place at
Speaker 4: the annual gathering organized by a circle.
Speaker 2: And okay, so this is not we're not talking about.
Speaker 4: But it takes place. It's a thrillers to be granted
Speaker 4: in reality, and because I was part of the WEF,
Speaker 4: I understand the function because this gathering, so that the backdrop.
Speaker 4: But again it's not about the Web. So the idea
Speaker 4: is to explore in a thriller. First of all, what's
Speaker 4: happening behind the scenes of Dabos, And there is a
Speaker 4: lot happening. A lot happening is that nobody sees the
Speaker 4: sex parties, for example, and I describe one of them
Speaker 4: in the book. A lot of these happens is happening.
Speaker 4: You know, everything closes in principle at any MPM NPM
Speaker 4: and then a huge amount of happens, more happens, So
Speaker 4: you want to go behind the scene to get a
Speaker 4: sense of what's happened. And also that's my thick thriller.
Speaker 4: So I eve an appetite thrillers. And I think that
Speaker 4: when you write fiction you are bound by nothing except
Speaker 4: the power of your own imagination. So you know, instead
Speaker 4: of writing an essay of what the global gathering is
Speaker 4: all about and what's happening, I think thriller opens many,
Speaker 4: many doors that you wouldn't be able to explore otherwise.
Speaker 4: And this is a spy thriller because there is such
Speaker 4: a usefu concentration of power in Davos, financial power, political power,
Speaker 4: economic power, media power. Let's think about how enticing this
Speaker 4: may be for intelligence services. And this is what this
Speaker 4: book explores through the lens of what's happening between the
Speaker 4: US and Russia at the moment. So the idea was
Speaker 4: really to figure out what Trump is going to do
Speaker 4: to intelligence services in the US and how this might
Speaker 4: affect the geopotical order in the months to come, right,
Speaker 4: And I don't want to say more than that, right
Speaker 4: and doubt.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is perfect as a setting for a
Speaker 2: story like this, isn't it.
Speaker 3: And of course if you're walking around the town, you
Speaker 3: can see we're in the Congress Center yesterday with the
Speaker 3: Ukrainian presidents and Lenski John Mcthread and Chief did an
Speaker 3: interview with him. There are snipers on the roofs, there
Speaker 3: are helicopters overhead, the security is palpable. That sort of
Speaker 3: sense of tension is there because of the people that
Speaker 3: are walking around. So it is not a huge stretch
Speaker 3: of imagination to go from that to think what's going on.
Speaker 4: But you know, you couldn't write an essay or an
Speaker 4: article in the journal about it, because by virtual intelligence
Speaker 4: is about what you don't know. If you know about it,
Speaker 4: it's not intelligence anymore. So you can only explore this
Speaker 4: via the novel. Yes, it's thriller, and this is what
Speaker 4: I'm trying to do in this book.
Speaker 2: And stress completely factionalize everyone out there.
Speaker 4: Well in fiction, but grounded in reality.
Speaker 3: In reality, in reality, because hey, I guess the serious
Speaker 3: side is is there are serious implications for the conversations
Speaker 3: that are happening here that affects the one percent of people.
Speaker 3: There are big problems happening in the world, there are
Speaker 3: conflicts happening in the world, and you have the power
Speaker 3: brokers of the planet convening here in this place. So
Speaker 3: this idea that there's this kind of underbelly of activity
Speaker 3: here is quite compelling.
Speaker 4: Very much so. And again, you know, so much is
Speaker 4: happening in this underbelly. Yeah, there is what everybody sees,
Speaker 4: and you report wonderfully about this, and then there is
Speaker 4: what's happening in the underbelly, which is probably even more
Speaker 4: significant because selection, as we can see this week, is
Speaker 4: going to change everything in the US and in the
Speaker 4: rest of the world.
Speaker 3: And it's been certainly this week. It's felt to me
Speaker 3: like it's the conversations that aren't happening on the stage,
Speaker 3: the conversations that no one really is willing to have
Speaker 3: in public because everyone has been watching actually what's been
Speaker 3: happening in Washington this week, of course, so that he
Speaker 3: has really heightened this sense of the action happening slightly
Speaker 3: off stage here and everyone watching and waiting to see
Speaker 3: what the new present's going to do. We all know
Speaker 3: that he's doing a lot, and it's going to affect
Speaker 3: the businesses, the economies, the countries that are represented here
Speaker 3: this week, but it's all slightly out of their control,
Speaker 3: which feels a little bit unusual for the power brokers
Speaker 3: who are here as well.
Speaker 2: You know, they don't like it particularly.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely, and you said before we started this interview
Speaker 4: that there was a sentiment that Europe is very fearful
Speaker 4: about the future. And this is what his book explodes
Speaker 4: in particular, because there's so many reasons to assert that,
Speaker 4: you know, geopolitically, economically, financially, Europe is going to be
Speaker 4: increasingly vulnerable in the years to come. And you saw
Speaker 4: it by interviewing. I mean, when it's viewing the European leaders,
Speaker 4: everybody is guarded. Everybody is incredibly careful about what they're saying.
Speaker 2: They don't want to get on the wrong side.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, not because it's sure in trouble, but.
Speaker 3: Also you know, the other thing I've you know, we've
Speaker 3: heard this this week as well, is they fell Europe's
Speaker 3: being left behind, the American economy, the American companies. They
Speaker 3: are galloping away over the horizon. There doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: be any solutions to the problems that the structural problems
Speaker 3: that you have got.
Speaker 4: And it feels even more personally, there might be an
Speaker 4: upside when Europe is is stuck with its back against
Speaker 4: the wall. Maybe at the moment when yeah, absolutely, policies
Speaker 4: will be put into place and europeut investment into defense
Speaker 4: and the you.
Speaker 2: Know, GDP part of that's going to be the hope, right.
Speaker 4: Defense spending with increase and because it would be forced
Speaker 4: to do that, and.
Speaker 2: Then maybe they will be improving the said of the world.
Speaker 2: Is that going to be the way?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, as we saw this year, things changed incredibly fast,
Speaker 4: incredibly Everything that's happened this week was unimaginable last Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it really was, right, it was. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think there was there was definitely a sense of
Speaker 3: foreboding about political shifts last year. But you're right, I
Speaker 3: feel like the conversation last year had none of the
Speaker 3: angles that we're that we're that we're that are at
Speaker 3: the forefront this year.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and here we are and here we are.
Speaker 3: So what's next, Tierry? Are you are we gonna have
Speaker 3: a three point zero?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, the whole fantastic opportunity right the next one.
Speaker 2: So next year there will be more deaths.
Speaker 4: That that was absolutely, of course.
Speaker 2: I look forward to I look forward to reading that.
Speaker 3: Serian maller I thank you so much for telling us
Speaker 3: about your book and and with your history with this forum,
Speaker 3: and maybe we could come back next.
Speaker 2: Year, And thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of In the
Speaker 3: City from Bloomberger. It was hosted by me David Merritt.
Speaker 3: It was produced by Somersadi and Moses and sound design
Speaker 3: is by Blake Maples and Brendan Francis Newnham is our
Speaker 3: executive producer. Special thanks to Tierry Mallarey. Please do subscribe, rate,
Speaker 3: and review wherever you listen to the podcast.