According to a statement from the forum, WEF Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe will take over temporarily at Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former CEO and chairman of Nestlé SA in New York.
“I decided to resign from the position of chairman and board members and take effect immediately,” Schwab said in a statement. The forum has begun searching for future chairmen.
WEF began in 1971
The WEF hosts annually in the Swiss ski town of Davos and is one of the world’s most prominent gatherings of national executives, top politicians, executives and business leaders. Schwab began to become WEF in 1971, becoming a management workshop.
The 87-year-old announced last year that he would be lifted from the active leadership role of the organization.
Today, the board of trustes is compiled of more than two dozen world leaders and include Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, World Bank president Ajay Banga, WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, former US Vice President Al Gore, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde and her successor at the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva.
The issue of elitism
Although Schwab has always stressed the need for better global cooperation, his organization has been facing allegations of elitism.
Schwab was born in Germany and a Swiss parent, choosing the Alpine town of Davos to make guests feel relaxed and speak freely, according to the website of the Geneva-based nonprofit. The forum attracted global attention and criticism with the slogan “committed to improving the state of the world” and attracted the help of conspiracy theories.
