"It's all for the television cameras," Henry Ross Perot Jr., 53, chairman of Hillwood Development Corp., his family's real estate development firm, said in a phone interview from his office in Dallas. "They usually tell the organizers when and where they will protest in advance."
Perot said he plans to attend lectures and investigate new investment opportunities, especially in Africa, where he owns a stake in safari operator Robin Hurt Ltd.
"That's the last continent to have a boom," said Perot, whose father, Ross Perot, twice ran for U.S. President as an independent candidate. "They certainly have the human capital and natural resources. The question is do they have the enlightened leaders to lead them there?"
Perot is one of at least 20 U.S. billionaires who will be at Davos this year, the largest national contingent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. He'll be joined by hedge-fund managers Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors LP, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates LP and George Soros of Soros Fund Management LLC.
Soros, 81, who has donated more than $8 billion to charity and has been going to Davos for 20 years, has said he's in favor of increasing taxes on the rich. He "recognizes that income inequality is a problem," according to his spokesman, Michael Vachon, who said Soros declined to comment further.
More than half of international investors say income inequality hampers economic growth, according to a Bloomberg survey published today. The Jan. 23-24 poll of 1,209 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers also found that 31 percent don't think it's appropriate for government policy to address the issue. Overall, almost one in three surveyed back radical changes to the capitalist system.
The country with the second-highest number of billionaires registered for the conference is India, with at least 16. Russia will send at least 12, including Oleg Deripaska, chief executive officer of United Co. Rusal, the world's largest aluminum producer, and Viktor Vekselberg, the company's chairman, who owns about 16 percent along with partners.
Vekselberg, 54, called on Davos's "unprecedented collective of the world's influencers" to cooperate amid what he described as a "very somber economic context."
"In some cases, more impact can happen over a cup of coffee than in days or weeks of formal discussions if the right people connect," he wrote in an e-mail.
Deripaska, 44, said if Davos participants can find "new ways out of the global political and economy instability" at this year's meeting, "criticism will go down."