It’s NEF versus WEF for title of world’s top talk shop

Brace yourself for the battle of the forums. The challenger, the global news brand Bloomberg, is about to take on the long- reigning champion, the World Economic Forum (WEF), for the title of the world’s leading talking shop.

The contest begins in earnest on Tuesday when Michael Bloomberg opens day one of the very first New Economy Forum (NEF) in Singapore. We had a taster yesterday in a briefing from a senior Bloomberg executive, who asked to remain anonymous, in the lush surroundings of the Sentosa resort, the island-city resort where President Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a few months ago.

Who comes out on top in the WEF vs. NEF tussle remains to be seen, but the Neffers believe they have a distinct climatic advantage in the opening round. The balmy greenery of the Southeast Asian tropics versus the bracing air of an Alpine resort? It’s a matter of taste.

Bloomberg made great play of the Weffers’ apparently parochial focus in Switzerland, but actually the WEF has gone to great lengths to globalize its offering in recent years.

Frank Kane

It’s unlikely the NEF event will always be in Singapore. It had been planned for Beijing, until the Chinese decided they had other items clashing on the agenda, not least the prospect of a trade war with the US. Future events are likely to be in the Chinese capital, though occasional events in other parts of Asia and even the Middle East are not ruled out.

Bloomberg made great play of the Weffers’ apparently parochial focus in Switzerland, but actually the WEF has gone to great lengths to globalize its offering in recent years. The number of attendees at Davos, particularly from China, has grown significantly, and WEF events take place in every continent throughout the year. (It’s in Dubai just next week, for example.)

The NEF is not able to hide its American lineage. Bloomberg’s founder is a three-times mayor of New York and a possible contender for the Democrat nomination in 2020. But it is also a truly global organization, represented by the ubiquitous terminal on every trading desk in every financial center from Shanghai to San Francisco, as well as the TV, radio, magazines and digital empire that spans the globe.

I think the two are even on points in the globalism round. In fact, WEF landed a tactical blow by choosing yesterday to launch its 2019 agenda, under the slogan “new architecture for the next wave of globalization.”

But NEF feels it has a decisive advantage because of its very newness; hence the name and its catchphrase — “a new community or a new economy.” It is true that the world has changed dramatically since the global financial crisis of 2009, and that change has accelerated since the Trump presidency, though not entirely because of the US president. Has the WEF kept up with that transformation?

The high majority of global growth, and all the growth in human population over the next 50 years, will take place outside the European-North American hinterland of the WEF.

The big issues that the world faces in those coming decades will be universal ones, like inequality, climate change, urbanization, trade and gender. Bloomberg believes that its global network of connections in the business world will help it facilitate a dialogue that can solve those difficulties.

What’s more, it promises a more empirical approach to solving these problems than its Alpine rival. While Davos is dismissed (rather unfairly) as “hot air in a cold climate,” NEF is pledging to come up with a list of 10 global problems and a program to solve them.

They are eminently down-to-earth steps for the private sector. Developing a certification program for worker reskilling, for example, committing to hire and integrate refugees, and — almost prosaically — creating a more successful market for recycled products, are on the NEF “to do” list.

A “solutions lab,” with the counsel of consulting firm McKinsey, will hopefully come up with answers.

It is perhaps in organization and financial structure that NEF and WEF will differ most. While the Swiss is a not-for-profit organization, it still generates big revenues from its corporate partners and participants, not to mention the annual boost to the coffers of the hotels, restaurants and bars of Davos from the 3,000-odd attendees at its annual meeting

The NEF, on the other hand, will not be mainly about economic value creation. Its meetings will be smaller, around the 400 mark, and chief executives will be invited for free. The main economic benefit will be in brand-building, networking and content generation for the Bloomberg parent.

Who will win the contest remains to be seen. It promises to be a hard-run fight. In my view, WEF currently has an intangible but significant advantage in the Davos brand, with all the glitz and glamor it carries with it, which will pertain until elitism truly becomes a dirty word.