The 40th World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting will take place next week in Davos, Switzerland, from 27-31 January with the theme, “Improve the state of the world: rethink, redesign, rebuild”.

Josef Ackermann, who is a Member of the Foundation Board of the WEF, will attend this year's meeting in the capacity of Co-Chairman.

In a pre-event video message, Deutsche Bank’s CEO and Chairman of the Deutsche Bank Management Board, said this year’s forum was particularly crucial. “We need to keep in mind that 2010 will be a critical year for us, for our economies, for our citizens and for global society as a whole. The challenges we face are possibly greater than ever before.”

Speaking about the agenda for this year’s forum, Ackermann said there was a need for closer international cooperation, among policy makers and business leaders. “We need to find the right regulatory responses and the right balance to the financial crisis and start paying off the fiscal liabilities incurred as a result,” he said.

When asked about the central pillars of a new domestic and international regulatory regime for financial institutions, Ackermann said there were four central elements:

“Sound capital ratios that are in line with the underlying risks,” he explained. “We should be careful not to stifle economic activity. Secondly, we need a more robust market infrastructure that allows us to remove failed institutions without disrupting the financial system. With greater transparency, liquidity and reliability it will be possible for us to rebuild investor confidence in highly complex markets.

“Thirdly, in addition to more robust infrastructure, we need efficient recovery and resolution regimes for an orderly winding down of large and complex financial institutions. And finally, new regulation must be internationally harmonised to avoid competitive distortions and market fragmentation and, in the end, a renationalisation of the global economy.

View the full video here.

A copy of the WEF’s recently published report, Global Risks 2010, is attached below.

[PDF / 3,73 MB]