The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

54 Saturday May 28 2022 | the times

Business

5

For World Economic Forum delegates
trying to escape talk of war, food short-
ages and recession, Facebook owner
Meta was only too happy to show them
a completely different world.
Just yards from the congress centre,
Meta had opened a showroom where
delegates could slip on an Oculus virtu-
al reality headset and experience the
metaverse, on which the technology
giant is spending tens of billions of dol-
lars in the belief that it is the future of
the internet.
Last October Mark Zuckerberg an-
nounced plans to build a metaverse for
its billions of users where they would
“shop, work and socialise... in a way
that is beyond what’s possible today, be-
yond the constraints of screens, beyond

“The problem is [that] we all agree,”
bemoaned one Davos veteran, who has
attended the annual meeting of the
World Economic Forum (WEF) for
more than 25 years.
“There are no Russians, obviously,
but where are the Chinese? Even the
serious Americans have stayed home,”
he said over dinner on Wednesday.
For a meeting that has come to sym-
bolise globalisation, for good and bad,
Davos had a distinctly European — and
central European at that — feeling this
year. Many British regulars also stayed
away, opting to network at the Chelsea
Flower Show rather than on the Davos
promenade.
Delegate numbers were down a fifth
from the 2020 gathering, although it
felt like more, and the news agency
Reuters reported that Zurich airport
expected a third fewer take-offs and
landings than usual due to the reduced
number of private and state jets.
So, has the “Davos spirit” died with
globalisation?
The meeting certainly had a decided-
ly less global feel, given the absence of
heads of state from the non-western
world. The leaders of China, India,
Turkey, most of Latin America and
swathes of Africa were absent. Instead,
coveted speaking slots to address the
main congress were given to President
Zelensky of Ukraine, Pedro Sánchez,
the Spanish prime minister, and Olaf
Scholz, the German chancellor.
“This is the least diverse Davos I have
ever experienced,” said a senior Euro-
pean politician who has attended the
WEF for years.
Heavyweight names, including Pres-
ident Biden, Boris Johnson and Emma-
nuel Macron, the newly re-elected
president of France, also stayed away,
suggesting that elitist gatherings may
be out of favour with politicians who are
fighting cost-of-living crises and slow-
ing economies on their home soil.
One senior executive at a global bank
said the annual jamboree had a decid-
edly more “muted” feel as war raged
1,200 miles away in Ukraine. “A low-
key Davos is needed and appropriate
given all that is going on in the world,”
said the banker, whose firm had re-
duced its delegate numbers this year.
But WEF organisers seemed to
embrace their brave new world, holding

multiple sessions on where next for

global co-operation, the future of mul-

tilateralism and whether globalisation

was really dead or just in a coma.

A raft of world leaders used the sum-

mit to ring alarm bells over a looming

global food crisis — arguably the big-

gest sign of the breakdown in inter-

national supply chains and a reversal of

the open trade that has characterised

the past three decades of globalisation.

“There has been an extraordinary

awakening that we are in a global food

crisis that we’ve not seen before,”

warned David Beasley, head of the

United Nations World Food Pro-

gramme.

“Now everyone is beginning to give it

the attention it needs, because the con-

sequences if we don’t are going to be ab-

solutely horrific.”

Existing forms of global co-operation

are also at risk of coming apart at the

seams. Mathias Cormann, secretary

general of the Organisation for Eco-

nomic Co-operation and Development

(OECD), told the forum that a land-

mark international agreement to

establish a minimum corporate tax in-

volving 130 jurisdictions would not be

signed off as planned this summer, and

that implementation would be delayed

until at least 2024.

Ratification of the tax deal could col-

lapse in the United States in the face of

fierce Republican resistance at raising

the tax burden on American tech

giants. In the European Union, an

agreement is being blocked by Poland.

Cracks also began to show in western

unity over Russia. During the week,

Hungary’s obstinate opposition to an

EU oil embargo led Zelensky to be-

moan the lack of urgency from the likes

of Germany as his country enters the

four month of the conflict. “Is there this

unity in practice? I can’t see it,” the

Ukrainian leader asked attendants at

an event on the sidelines of the WEF.

For all the lamentations over the

breakdown in global diplomacy repre-

sented by Russia’s war, some age-old

tensions were still on show. Ursula von

der Leyen, president of the European

Commission, spent three days in Davos

— but made sure she had no bilateral

meetings with the two countries out-

side the bloc: the UK and Switzerland,

the host.

“They are both on our shit-list,” said

a senior EU official, referring to spats

with London over the Northern Ireland

protocol and Switzerland’s brinkman-

ship over upgrading its EU trading

relationship.

After four days of panels, dinners and

speechifying, some attendees were less

keen to declare the death of globalisa-

tion. “[Davos] is a bubble where the

same people are constantly telling and

retelling each other the same stories,”

Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the

Netherlands and a champion of free

trade, told The Times.

He said only “10 per cent” of the

warnings around the decline of globali-

sation rang true. “What did strike me,

and which might be closer to the truth,

is the emergence of regionalism, where

co-operation and multilateralism is

happening at a more local level.

“You’re likely to see more of this with

reshoring and [countries] becoming

less dependent on international supply

chains outside their regions. But I think

in the longer term multilateralism,

democracy and free trade are here to

stay,” Rutte said.

the limits of distance and physics”. Nic-

ola Mendelsohn, the British former ad-

vertising executive who is vice-presi-

dent of Meta’s global business group,

explained: “It’s not about changing

what we do in the real world. But if we

are going to spend time online — which

we all do — how can you enhance that?

Give it a feeling of presence.”

Mendelsohn was among a number of

senior Meta executives who flew into

Davos this week to show off the Oculus

hardware and the tech group’s Horizon

Worlds platform, which allows devel-

opers to build their own virtual reality

universes.

“Every conversation I have had since

October with chief executives and chief

marketing officers has been about the

metaverse,” she said. “Thinking

through what they need to do and how

it works for them. Yet many don’t know

what it is. Many haven’t even yet expe-

rienced what it means to actually go in-

to an immersive world.”

Many companies are already experi-

menting with augmented reality, said

Mendelsohn, from giants such as Wal-

mart to the online furniture store

Made.com, which is using augmented

reality to show customers what a piece

of furniture would look like in a room.

“You can actually look at it. And

guess what? Nobody returns it, and

those products are selling out because

people can actually see what that sofa is

going to look like in their room,” she

said.

“Beauty brands like Sephora and

Charlotte Tilbury allow customers to

put on eyeshadow and lipstick, and

Ray-Ban has a fabulous little shop on

Instagram where you can put on differ-

ent sunglasses.”

It is not just about shopping, insisted

Mendelsohn. “Disney has made no

secret of the fact that they are

going all-in on the metav-

erse and they’re looking

at building their own

worlds,” she said.

Meta itself host-

ed a Foo Fighters

“after party” in its

Horizon Worlds

following this

year’s Super Bowl.

“Some people

could go in the real

world, and people

that couldn’t get to where they were

playing got to experience it too.”

Meta is also betting on the metaverse

transforming work meetings by devel-

oping a specific product for

businesses called Horizon

Workrooms. “I do my

weekly leadership

meeting in Horizon

Workrooms. It’s

better than doing

it on Zoom. You

can pick up — like

now — if I gestic-

ulate. You can see

how I’m feeling.

You can interrupt

me. You don’t have to

pause and wait for

someone,” she said.

A virtual Davos, anyone?

Metaverse offers new horizons in an alpine resort

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A virtua

Richard Fletcher Davos

Delegates were able to

try on Oculus VR headsets

Global spirit deserts downbeat Davos

Key players shunned

the forum to deal with

domestic crises, write

Richard Fletcher

and Mehreen Khan

A decidedly Eurocentric WEF panel, where globalisation is still the buzzword — despite the notable absence of the leaders of Britain, France and the United States.

Some British regulars preferred to attend the Chelsea Flower Show this week, where they may might have bumped into Joanna Lumley with Chelsea Pensioners

SIKARIN FON THANACHAIARY/WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM; YUI MOK/PA