Title: Founder & President of the WEF

Date of birth: March 30 1938 Ravensburg, Germany

Education: University of Fribourg, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University

Background information: A German professor who created the World Economic Forum to attract the leaders of business, politics, media and academia in order to moderate capitalism and give it structures and rules. For the past 31 years, the annual meeting has been held at Davos, Switzerland but will this year be held at Waldorf-Astoria hotel in the heart of Manhattan. Schwab decided on the move to New York soon after September 11 as a gesture of 'solidarity'. Also partly because he feared that the terrorist attacks and budget cuts caused by recession would deter American participants from flying to Europe.