When they roll up outside Bilderberg, some of the guests simply cannot keep the grin off their faces. It’s all too amazing. This is the big time: their entry into the inner sanctum of power. The chance to rub clipboards with power, and slip out for a mid-conference cigarette with the king of Holland. Make a good impression, crack a few jokes about the Belgian PM, and who knows – maybe end up on the board of Royal Dutch Shell.
When Dave Cote, the boss of giant defence supplier Honeywell, got out of his limo, I honestly thought he was going to pop with joy. He hasn’t been this happy since his company was chosen to make the engines for Reaper drones.
But even grinning Dave wasn’t as giddy with glee as Niall Ferguson.Kissinger’s biographer burst out of his Mercedes like Usain Bolt off the blocks. Three days locked in a hotel basement with his beloved Henry! What could be sweeter?
Through the blinding intensity of his delight, Niall caught a fleeting glimpse of Jacob Wallenberg, the billionaire Swedish industrialist, fiddling with his luggage. He leapt across the hotel forecourt like a gazelle, darting between concierges so that he could trot along inside with Wallenberg. Zero to schmooze in 4.8 seconds. That’s world class.
Ferguson appears on the Bilderberg participant list as “professor of history, Harvard University”, which is true, but perhaps not quite true enough. Perhaps more tellingly, given the high-finance occasion, Ferguson is on the board of the boutique investment firm AMG, which “currently manages approximately $642bn in assets”. Not bad for a history don.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the Bilderberg group’s pathological love of privacy, there are quite a few people here in Dresden who are hiding their lights under bushels. Marie-Josée Kravis, for example, is listed rather quaintly as “senior fellow, Hudson Institute”, rather than as a board member of Publicis – one of the world’s largest advertising and PR companies – and a director of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company. She used to be on the board of Ford – calling her an academic is like calling Cliff Richard a wine merchant. Sure, he does a nice line in Portuguese syrah, but that’s not really what defines him. You might as well list Marie-Josée Kravis as “owner of the best luggage at Bilderberg”. True, but not very usefully true.
An even better example is Marta Dassù, attending Bilderberg 2016 as “senior director, European affairs, Aspen Institute”, which sounds an awful lot more dry and academic than “board member of giant Italian industrial conglomerate, the Trevi Group” or “a director of one of the world’s largest arms companies, Finmeccanica”.
Marta has just the kind of twinkly smile you’d expect from the director of a gigantic defence contractor. You realise that with Finmeccanica and Honeywell present at an Airbus-organised conference, which has the CIA-backed Palantir’s Alex Karp on the steering committee alongside Jacob Wallenberg (the Wallenberg’s are major stakeholders in Saab), you could have yourself a nice little arms company breakout session. But this is hardly the public perception Bilderberg wants (insofar as it wants a public perception at all, which obviously it doesn’t).
Of course, these corporate positions are all matters of public record, but they don’t fit in with Bilderberg’s veneer of academia as well as “fellow” or “professor”.
And speaking of professors, don’t forget the big boss of Bilderberg, Prof Victor Halberstadt, who, with his Geppetto moustache and dark glasses, looks halfway between a toymaker and a semi-retired Sicilian hitman.
Victor’s on the list as “Professor of Economics, Leiden University” but he’s also on the board of international advisers of Goldman Sachs. Halberstadt is the quiet Dutchman at the heart of Bilderberg, and has been close to serious power and money for decades. He used to be “HM the Queen’s Informateur” which is perhaps the best clue to the source of his influence: Beatrix and the Dutch royals.
Politicians who are at Bilderberg, like Labour’s Helen Goodman who’s here in Dresden, should be aware that a meeting with Halberstadt is a meeting with Goldman Sachs rather more than it’s a meeting with Leiden University.
Goodman is an interesting case. Listed as “MP, Labour party”, she is also a member of the House of Commons Treasury committee. This committee oversees the “policy of HM Treasury”.
This is a touch troubling, when you realise that Goodman is currently tucked away in a private three-day Deutsche Bank-funded meeting with two board members of HSBC. She’s utterly surrounded by bank bosses and the heads of vast financial institutions, with no press oversight, and considerable pressure upon her not to speak publicly about the discussions. Is this a conflict of interest, or just a handy “gathering of insights”, as Bilderberg would insist. Who knows? Perhaps a fellow MP might ask her.
Just a few years ago, Helen Goodman, the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, was chiding David Cameron in parliament for going on a foreign trip with an oil company executive, Ayman Asfari. Now she finds herself locked away at a three-day lobbying event in Dresden with the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell and three board members of BP, including the chairman and group chief executive. Awkward!
Perhaps this is why her arrival smile looked a little fragile. Why it never quite reached her eyes. She was suddenly dubious about the company she was about to keep. Either that or she was anxious about how you’re meant to address the king of Holland. If you’re still wondering, Helen, I think “Your Royal Highest Shareholder in Shell” should do the trick.