• Europe making progress, but needs structural reforms and fiscal stimulus
• US economy strengthening, but room for rate hikes is limited
• Spain is a model for structural reforms
• For more information about the Annual Meeting 2015: http://wef.ch/davos15

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 22 January 2015 – Business leaders and policy-makers gathered for the 45th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters told participants that Europe needs quantitative easing but that monetary policy alone will not restore growth and jobs to the region.

“We’re all for quantitative easing in Europe, but it’s not enough,” Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University, USA, said. Summers said that quantitative easing was likely to be less effective in Europe than it was in the Unites States since Europe already has very low interest rates and European banks are less able to transmit monetary expansion to the wider economy. Summers urged Europe to embark on fiscal stimulus and said that “deflation and secular stagnation are the risks of our time”.

Gary D. Cohn, President and Chief Operating Officer, Goldman Sachs, USA, said that the US economy is strong but weakness elsewhere would make it hard for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. He said the dollar’s strength, which could have a chilling effect on the US economy, would also encourage US monetary authorities to keep rates low. “We’re in a currency war. One of the easier ways to stimulate your economy is to weaken your currency,” he said.

Ray Dalio, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, Bridgewater Associates, USA, said that a weaker currency has to be part of the solution for Europe’s problems, given many European countries’ lack of competitiveness. “Forceful QE and forceful structural reforms, including currency adjustment, are what is needed,” he said. Dalio expressed concern that with interest rates at or near zero, central banks have lost their traditional method for stimulating economies. Fiscal policy now must work together with monetary policy to stimulate growth. “Monetary policy that helps fund deficits, that monetizes the deficits, is a path to consider.”

Dalio added that “Spain has done a wonderful job with structural reforms. It is a model.” He noted that the fastest growth often comes from countries that successfully implement structural reforms, such as China in the recent past.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC; World Economic Forum Foundation Board Member, also complimented Spain on its reforms. She said that Europe’s monetary union is still quite young but has nonetheless moved forward quickly. “Massive progress has been made in the last five years. More progress has to be made in terms of fiscal union and banking union.”

“I am confident that Europe can make it,” Ana Botín, Chairman, Banco Santander, Spain, said. She said Europe is now seeing a great deal of foreign investment, including in her own bank’s recent capital rise. Some European countries are successfully implementing structural reforms to increase competitiveness. Automobile factories in Spain are now more productive than those in Germany. “We are making progress,” she said. “It takes time for a region to unify.”

The Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting 2015 are: Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Group, India; Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, United Kingdom; Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Alliance Trust, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader Alumnus; Jim Yong Kim, President, The World Bank, Washington DC; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA; and Roberto Egydio Setubal, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil.

• Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli, Beninois-French singer Angélique Kidjo will be awarded at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting with a Crystal Award
• Introduced in 1995, the 21^st Crystal Awards recognize personalities in the arts who are true global citizens, and help improve the state of the world through their art
• The Crystal Awards Ceremony marks the opening of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which focuses increasingly on culture as a means to promote inclusion and equality
• For more information about the Annual Meeting 2015: http://wef.ch/davos15

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 20 January 2015 – The World Economic Forum will mark the opening of its 45^th Annual Meeting on Tuesday by awarding three exceptional artist and cultural leaders with a Crystal Award:

Shigeru Ban, Principal Architect of Shigeru Ban Architects in Japan. Ban uses paper and cardboard tubes to build low-cost, scalable, durable and dignified shelters for disaster survivors around the world.  His works include the Temporary Elementary School (Chengdu, China) and the Container Temporary Housing (Onagawa, Japan).

Andrea Bocelli, World-Famous Singer-Songwriter and Founder of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation. His Foundation works to help people in need due to illness, poverty and social exclusion by promoting and supporting national and international projects that foster the overcoming of such barriers and help them to realize their full potential.

Angélique Kidjo, a Grammy Award winning Musician, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Co-founder of the Batonga Foundation. Kidjo has long used her voice to speak up for the world’s most vulnerable children and their families. In her visits to communities across Africa and Central-America, she promotes girls’ education,.

“We are very happy to distinguish these three outstanding personalities who not only are world famous artists but who also are concerned about humanitarian issues and committed to using their time and energy to make a difference,” said Hilde Schwab, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

In addition to the Crystal Awards, the Forum is organizing a series of cultural events in Davos, to highlight the importance of culture in achieving inclusion and equality across the world. The Events include “In Search of Balance” a series of digital photographic installations in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum; “The Refuge”, with artist Lynette Wallworth, intimate portraits of 10 female refugees using projection; and “The Studio”, with Daan Roosegaarde’s Dune, an interactive, energy-neutral landscape of LED lights that react to the motion of passing visitors, and are the spark for a series of sessions on creative solutions for sustainability.

“Cultural leaders are coming to Davos this year to respond to a climate of exclusion by providing visions of balance, inclusiveness and nuance. The arts are included in Davos now more than ever because they are needed. Culture is how we see the world.  In Davos, we have a responsibility to bring the arts into the mix,” Nico Daswani, Head of Arts & Culture for the Programme Development Team, World Economic Forum.

The Annual Meeting 2015 will take place from 20 to 24 January under the theme, The New Global Context, with over 2,500 participants.   The Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting 2015 are: Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Group, India; Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, United Kingdom;  Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Alliance Trust, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader Alumnus;  Jim Yong Kim, President, The World Bank, Washington DC;  Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA; and Roberto Egydio Setubal, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil.

• New Forum report, The Future of Electricity, finds that the electricity sector faces increased uncertainties and declining returns for utilities as it seeks to make the transition to a low-carbon system
• Report offers guidance on transforming the electricity sector to a more sustainable, affordable and reliable system; outlines recommendations to achieve an estimated $7.6 trillion in investments needed by 2040 to meet energy policy objectives
• Report also identifies dimensions of policy, market design and business models as key investment enablers
• For more information about the Annual Meeting 2015: http://wef.ch/davos15

• World Economic Forum members present a cyber value-at-risk framework that shows what companies can do to protect themselves against cyberattacks and how they can assess the impact of cyberthreats
• The framework arrives in the midst of a wave of cyberattacks against companies and governments
• Download the full report here

Davos, Switzerland, 19 January 2015 – The World Economic Forum and its partners have developed a new way for organizations to calculate the impact of cyberthreats. The framework, called “cyber value-at-risk” comes at a time when cyberattacks are increasing in velocity and intensity, and when 90% of companies worldwide recognize they are insufficiently prepared to protect themselves against them.

“Continuous cyberattacks on global organizations are showing that we are at a crossroads,” said Alan Marcus, Senior Director of the Information and Communication Technology Industries at the World Economic Forum. “The same technologies many organizations have become so dependent on can also threaten their very core. This is why we are launching a Future of the Internet initiative in Davos, including this critical cyber value-at-risk framework.”

The proposed framework is part of a new report, Partnering for Cyber Resilience: Towards the Quantification of Cyber Threats, which was created in collaboration with Deloitte and with the input of 50 leading organizations from around the world. The report will be discussed at a session during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2015.

The purpose of the cyber value-at-risk approach is to help organizations make better decisions about investments in cybersecurity, develop comprehensive risk management strategies, and help stimulate the development of global risk transfer markets. The framework helps organizations address questions such as how vulnerable they are to cyberthreats, how valuable the key assets at stake are, and who might be targeting them.

The framework requires organizations to understand key cyber-risks and the dependencies between them. It will also help them establish how much of their value they could protect if they were victims of a data breach and for how long they can ensure their cyber protection.

Further testimonies:

Jacques Buith, Managing Partner at Deloitte Risk Services, said: “We need to be able to quantify cyber-risks if proper cyber-resilience assurance is to be achieved. Only then will management boards be able to take sound risk/reward decisions in this volatile world and thus secure their organizations’ cyber-resilience. We are proud to have been given the opportunity to work alongside the World Economic Forum on a framework to quantify cyber-risks. The World Economic Forum’s network enables as many organizations as possible to use these insights to protect their organizations against cyberattacks and provide for a safer digital world.”

According to Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands “the internet has become a key strategic resource for citizens, companies and governments alike. In order to fully realize its enormous potential for growth and innovation, governments and the private sector need to work together to ensure it remains free, open and secure. The Netherlands is a leader in the field of internet access, use of email, social media and mobile data. At the Global Conference on Cyber Space on 16/17 April in The Hague, we will discuss the challenges ahead with all the major stakeholders, from the public and the private sector. Partnering for Cyber Resilience, which has a strong track record in strengthening resilience to cyberthreats, is among these partners.”

TK Kurien, Chief Executive Officer of Wipro, said: “As part of the Partnering for Cyber Resilienceinitiative, we have been working together with members of the initiative to advance the cyber value-at-risk estimation. At Wipro, for example, we developed a model that has helped us build a more structured view of our risk profile and make more fact-based investments and policy decisions. We are also in active engagement with our customer boards and management to help them better appreciate risks and to transform their security profile. We hope this approach will serve other organizations as they develop their cyber-resilience strategies.”

More than 2,500 participants from over 140 countries, including more than 40 heads of state or government, will convene at the 45th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, taking place from 21 to 24 January 2015 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

The Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting 2015 are: Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Group, India; Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, United Kingdom; Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Alliance Trust, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader Alumnus;  Jim Yong Kim, President, The World Bank, Washington DC; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA; and Roberto Egydio Setubal, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil.

• The Global Strategic Foresight Community brings together 32 experts to identify insights, or shifts, that will shape future global, regional and industry agendas
• Members of the community are all drawn from leading public, private or civil society organizations
• For more information about the community and the “Global Shifts”: http://wef.ch/gsfc
• For more information about the Annual Meeting 2015: http://wef.ch/davos15

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 18 January 2015 – The World Economic Forum today launches the Global Strategic Foresight Community, a new multistakeholder peer network aimed at positively shaping future industry, regional and global agendas by identifying emerging or underappreciated global shifts and bringing them to the attention of decision-makers.

The community will consist initially of 32 established thought leaders drawn from leading organizations in the private, public and civil society sectors. The focus of the community’s work over the coming two years will be to identify and examine global shifts in today’s rapidly changing world. “The shifts that our members are focusing on were identified for the potential impact they could have on the future, and because of a sense that, by raising them today, we can maximize our prospects for leveraging their potential benefits,” said Trudi Lang, Director, Strategic Foresight, World Economic Forum.

The task of the community in its first two years will be to assess the shifts in terms of how and where they challenge current mental models, how they interact to enforce, balance, or counter each other, and how they might provoke systemic change across social, economic, environmental, technological and political systems. All insights generated will be shared with stakeholders of the World Economic Forum, including governments, businesses and civil society organizations, with the aim of improving leaders’ ability to take informed decisions.

“Broadening our understanding of what could occur, thinking the unthinkable, imagining options offers the opportunity to shape the future in ways we deem desired and meaningful. By taking a long-term, proactive approach we can adapt to our future, rather than simply be reactive,” said Kristel Van der Elst, Senior Director, Strategic Foresight, World Economic Forum.

The Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting 2015 are: Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder,Jubilant Bhartia Group, India; Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, United Kingdom; Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Alliance Trust, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader Alumnus; Jim Yong Kim, President, The World Bank, Washington DC; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA; and Roberto Egydio Setubal, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil.