Leaders at today’s G20 summit are expected to discuss a strategy for winding up the G8 group of industrialised economies that has served as a magnet for controversy and protest by anti-globalisation activists.

The G20, meeting for the third time since last year’s banking crisis, is likely to supplant the G8 over the next two years, people close to the negotiations have told The Times.

Under a plan to be debated today, two meetings of the world’s industrialised economies next year, in Canada and South Korea, would serve to launch a two-year process during which the G8 would be phased out in favour of the much larger grouping.

President Sarkozy launched an effort this summer to convert the G8 into a G14, supporting a call from Brazil to scrap the G8 and admit Brazil, China, India and other major emerging economies as permanent members. In recent years they have been invited to join some but not all G8 discussions, on an ad-hoc basis.

Ottawa is officially the next venue for a G8 summit. Mr Sarkozy said in August that the Canadian presidency would conduct the bulk of its summit as the G14 “and we intend to totally finish the transformation into the G14 under the French presidency in 2011”.

It was unclear last night if the French plan for an expanded G8 or the alternative of a takeover of its role by the G20 would win more backing in Pittsburgh, but it is the G20 that has dominated since the financial crisis.

Downing Street has been pushing for a permanent expansion of the G8 since Tony Blair hosted it in Gleneagles in 2005. “We realised that if you wanted an organisation that covered a significant portion of the global economy it would be crazy not to include the big emerging economies,” one British diplomat said last night. “Whither G20 will definitely be a topic” in today’s talks, he added.

The G8’s image has suffered from protests it attracted, the security operations mounted in response and the presence of Russia as a permanent member at a time when Moscow was curtailing democratic rights at home.

Given its aims of promoting and stabilising global growth, the G8 has been made to look increasingly anachronistic by the absence of China and India from its negotiations.

Explore Economics

• Pre-Budget Report 2009

• Budget 2009

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive