SEOUL, Oct 10 – More than 100 global business leaders including Microsoft founder Bill Gates have confirmed they will attend next month\’s G20 business summit in Seoul, organisers said Sunday.
They said Gates, who now co-chairs the charitable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would be among 112 executives taking part in the November 10-11 event on the sidelines of the G20 leaders\’ summit on November 11-12.
In a statement, organisers said 35 business chiefs are from the manufacturing or IT sectors, 28 from finance, 25 from energy and 24 from logistics, maritime or other sectors.
They said the total sales of companies taking part add up to four trillion dollars and their assets total around 30 trillion dollars.
Companies will include Royal Dutch Shell from the Netherlands, France\’s Total, the ING financial group from the Netherlands, Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard and Switzerland\’s Nestle.
South Korea is pushing to make the business summit a regular part of the G20 process.
Previous G20 summits have also included business chiefs. But organisers of this year\’s event said it would be the largest such gathering and would be closely linked to the main event.
They said the chief executives would be able to freely discuss their economic concerns at a round-table discussion with the political leaders, who are set to include the presidents of the United States and China.
