by realityfactchex | 2026-01-24 06:52:27+00:00
Fink's LI account published his own remarks on 2026-01-19 (not a spoken video, just the written notes apparently for it) at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-remarks-interim-co-chair-w...

To spare you from clicking:

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My Remarks as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos

Larry Fink
Published Jan 19, 2026

*Below are my remarks as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum at the Opening Sequence of the 2026 Annual Meeting as prepared for delivery on Tuesday, January 20, 2026.*

Welcome to the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum—with the strongest participation in Davos’s 56-year history.

This week, nearly 1,000 CEOs and Board Chairs are here.

So are 65 heads of state and government, representing about 40 percent of the world’s population.

And alongside them are some of the world’s most innovative startups and most impactful NGOs.

In fact, we believe that outside of the United Nations, this is the largest gathering of global leadership of the post-COVID era.

So, thank you for being part of something record-breaking.

But now for the harder question: Will anyone outside this room care?

Because if we’re being honest, for many people this meeting feels out of step with the moment: elites in an age of populism, an established institution in an era of deep institutional distrust.

And there’s truth in that critique.

I’ve believed in this forum for a long time. I certainly wouldn’t be leading it if I didn’t. But it’s also obvious that the world now places far less trust in us to help shape what comes next.

If WEF is going to be useful going forward, it has to regain that trust. And there are some fairly obvious ways to do that:

- Widen who gets a voice in these conversations.
- Be more transparent—and more engaged—with the people who don’t feel represented by rooms like this.
- And because this is the World Economic Forum, be more precise about what we mean by economic success.

# 1. Broadening Prosperity

Prosperity isn’t just growth in the aggregate. It can’t be measured by GDP or the market caps of the world’s largest companies alone. It has to be judged by how many people can see it, touch it, and build a future on it.

That, in my view, is the strongest critique of the last economic era.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more wealth has been created than in all prior human history combined. But in advanced economies, that wealth accrued to a far narrower share of people than any healthy society can sustain.

Now AI threatens to replay the same pattern. Early gains are flowing to the owners of models, data, and infrastructure. The open question is what happens to everyone else.

If AI does to white-collar work what globalization did to blue-collar, we need to confront that directly. Not with abstractions about “the jobs of tomorrow,” but with a credible plan for broad participation in the gains.

This is the test: Whether capitalism can evolve to turn more people into owners of growth—instead of spectators watching it happen.

And that kind of change is hard. Especially in a world of competing ideologies and assumptions about how the system should work.

# 2. Broadening the Debate

Which brings me to the second way Davos is changing: who gets invited into the conversation.

This forum can’t remain an echo chamber. And we shouldn’t want panels where everyone agrees 95 percent of the time. Because the world doesn’t.

You can already see that shift in who is here this year.

That doesn’t mean the goal is for everyone to leave having convinced someone else they’re right.

The objective isn’t agreement. It’s understanding. It’s sitting with people we disagree with, taking their arguments seriously, and being willing to admit that they might see something we don’t.

# 3. Broadening the Forum

But there’s a deeper challenge.

Many of the people most affected by what we talk about here will never come to this conference. That’s the central tension of this forum: Davos is an elite gathering trying to shape a world that belongs to everyone.

That’s why this year’s theme is the Spirit of Dialogue.

Because dialogue is the only way a room like this earns the legitimacy to shape ideas for people who aren’t in it.

And besides, the world needs some more good faith conversations with people who don’t typically talk to one another.

I think most people—at least intellectually—know that finding common ground with a stranger is a hopeful thing. It restores your faith in humanity a bit. But how often does it actually happen? Hopefully, a little more often now. Because dialogue—especially the listening half—is what the World Economic Forum is going to do more of.

For 56 years, the World Economic Forum has been synonymous with Davos. And that’s likely to remain true for a while.

But you should also see WEF start doing something new: showing up—and listening—in the places where the modern world is actually built. Davos, yes. But also places like Detroit and Dublin—and cities like Jakarta and Buenos Aires.

The mountain will come down to earth.

**Conclusion**

In fact, that’s why I agreed to take on this role after Klaus Schwab, whose more than half-century of work, together with the extraordinary dedication of the World Economic Forum’s staff, made this gathering possible. There was an opportunity to make this forum more transparent, and I thought that was the surest way to rebuild trust: when people can see who’s in the room, hear the debates, participate themselves.

That approach might fail at other gatherings. In this one, it works. Because for all the caricatures of this forum, the people who come here, the people I know, aren’t here to congratulate themselves or protect their own comfort.

We’re here for something bigger than ourselves and the organizations we represent. We believe economic progress should be shared. We believe prosperity should reach further than it has. And we believe institutions like WEF still matter in making that happen.

Let’s remember that this is about engaging in real conversations. I’m committing to listening, learning, and understanding. And I ask you to join me in doing the same.
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