In the mountains of Switzerland this weekend, in Europe's highest town, nestled between the Alpine ranges of the Plessur and Albula peaks, a seismic event that will resonate through the ranks of the world's most powerful and influential figures is building up to its annual climax.

It is that time once more — the moment when the great and the good, the high and the mighty from politics, business and academia will make their yearly pilgrimage to this remote Swiss ski resort in search of enlightenment and insight.

Next week, for the movers and shakers of the planet's corporate elite who will flock here, the only place to be is the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum. Yet this time it is a very different Davos that awaits, with an atmosphere unlike any in the 40-year history of these starry gatherings of political titans, corporate sultans and academic luminaries.

Over the past decade, the five-day Davos gathering has become celebrated as the rallying point for a vaguely triumphalist celebration of capitalism and globalisation, especially in its financial guise.

To Klaus Schwab, the eminence grise who is the Forum's formidable founder and slightly austere executive chairman, the point of the assembly may be summed up in the WEF's mission: “Committed to improving the state of the world.”

But for many of the wealthy and powerful who have gathered here each year in their droves, the draw that makes Davos the hottest of tickets is far from so idealistic.

Making the odyssey to these lofty surroundings on what Thomas Mann labelled the Magic Mountain has become, for many of the business and financial leaders who take part, both a badge of world stature and a lucrative opportunity for high-octane networking and deal-making with their global peers.

Nestled under the mountains at 5,000 feet, Davos became the pinnacle of prestige, power, money and celebrity. This was, and remains, a mecca for the men (and a few women) who see themselves as the Masters of the Universe. For them, it still holds a special kind of magic.

Yet this year must mark a radical and distinct shift in the atmosphere.

Capitalism is, after more than a year of vast, once-in-a-century upheavals for the world's financial system, in the midst of a near-existential crisis. Months of economic and financial turmoil will cast a long, dark shadow across the normally sunny mood in Davos. For the participants, this is Shangri-La no more.

As the 2,500 delegates jet in, the barren, icy landscape of the freezing Alps may seem more than usually forbidding, and appropriate. The mood in the meeting's hub - the purpose-built and elaborately decked out Congress Centre - is in danger of being less like that of a cathedral of capitalism and more like an intensive care ward. Some may be tempted to the nuclear bunker under the building that once served as cramped quarters for a fractious press pack.

Professor Schwab and his team have tried to foster a sense of optimism by convening the meeting under the theme of “Shaping the Post-crisis World”. Yet for those set to travel here, the anxiety is that the crisis remains all too clearly present and pervasive.

As the gathering gets under way, the cry will be: “save the project”. Some participants will do penance for past sins; others will arrive in search of panaceas, or at least a few answers. In any case, virtually all who will take part are expecting the financial crisis, and potential solutions, to dominate discussion, and far-reaching shifts in the global political and corporate landscape to emerge from debate on the critical economic trends in the world.

Professor Schwab himself says: “This meeting is the most crucial in the 40-year history of the Forum. It will be the place where key actors can address both a crisis of unprecedented scope and the sort of world we collectively want to see emerging once the crisis is over.

“What we are experiencing is the birth of a new era, a wake-up call to overhaul our institutions, our systems and above all our way of thinking.”

Among critical questions will be the shift in power some see taking place from the corporate world to governments, as a backlash builds up against the deregulation blamed for sowing the seeds of economic calamity.

"In recent years, it has been the corporate world that has been on the front foot at Davos, with Government almost trying to play catch-up,” says Mark Spelman, of Accenture, the consulting group that is a leading player at Davos. “This year I think that trend will be reversed.”

Mr Spelman believes that the WEF will be relentlessly serious and dominated by a search for “new rules for a new decade”. There will be an intense focus among business leaders present on how companies can cope in an age of increased, perhaps chronic volatility. Corporate chieftains here will seek to find a way to turn the threat of the crisis and global downturn into an opportunity.

For business people and political leaders alike, the fate of globalisation will also, inevitably, be a central preoccupation, amid worries over a retreat from a financially and economically integrated world into an age of revived protectionism and geopolitical tensions. Yet many pundits argue that globalisation remains an irreversible reality.

“The underlying forces of globalisation have not gone away,” says Accenture's Mark Foster. The world is increasingly integrated and interdependent, in spite of the slowdown, he says.

Nor will other aspects of Davos disappear, either. Some things at the meeting remain as fixtures. Whatever their fears for the future, and the annual grumbles over hotels and food, the big appeal of Davos among its regulars is enduringly simple: that so many of their ilk are still here, too. The forum has its critics, but, above all, it has critical mass.

That much remains true, and in spades. The roll call of glitzy figures gracing Davos's icy pavements is no less impressive than before. There are 41 heads of state or government, including Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin. Larry Summers, President Obama's chief economic adviser, is taking time out from crisis management in the US to deliver what is expected to be another pugnacious Davos performance.

From business, the castlist includes Bill Gates of Microsoft; News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of The Times; HSBC's boss Stephen Green; Jeroen van der Veer, head of Shell, and the chiefs of dozens of the world's other big multinationals.

For lesser mortals, and the only slightly less famous, there will be more of what the aficionados talk excitedly of as “Davos moments” - the chance encounter when they find themselves sandwiched in the queue at the coffee stand between, say, Tony Blair and Mr Gates.

And in between navigating the sweeping, daunting, ever-stimulating agenda of discussions and seminars, behind closed doors in these isolated confines, big deals - political and corporate - will be hatched and sealed. Now, as always, the echoes of Davos will reverberate across the globe for months to come.

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