Hopes of using Davos to forge a new international consensus to tackle poverty and the climate crisis have been thwarted by the decision of the World Bank president, David Malpass, to boycott the event.

To the surprise of the other multilateral institutions, Malpass turned down his invitation to attend despite being in Europe this week for the UK government’s Africa investment summit in London.

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In the past, World Bank presidents have played a prominent role at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, taking the opportunity to make the case for concerted action to tackle global poverty.

The heads of other major international organisations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization and the International Labour Organisation, attended the Davos event.

One source said Malpass’s decision not to attend the World Economic Forum reflected the Bank’s go-it-alone approach under his presidency. “He has effectively declared UDI [unilateral declaration of independence],” the source said. “We saw it at last year’s G7 summit in France. President [Emmanuel] Macron wanted a collective statement from the international organisations but Malpass vetoed it. He wouldn’t have the word multilateralism in the statement.”

Quick guide What is Davos 2020? Show Hide Davos is a Swiss ski resort now more famous for hosting the annual four-day conference for the World Economic Forum. For participants it is a festival of networking. Getting an invitation is a sign you have made it – and the elaborate system of badges reveals your place in the Davos hierarchy. The meeting is sponsored by a huge number of international banks and corporations.

For critics, “Davos man” is shorthand for the globe-trotting elite, disconnected from their home countries after spending too much time in the club-class lounge. Others just wonder if it is all a big waste of time. The 2020 meeting is being advertised as focusing on seven themes: Fairer economies, better business, healthy futures, future of work, tech for good, beyond geopolitics and how to save the planet. Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present at the event to put pressure on world leaders over that last theme.

A spokesman for the World Economic Forum said Malpass, who was Donald Trump’s nominee to head the World Bank, had been invited. The next two most senior officials at the Washington-based institution – Axel van Trotsenburg, the bank’s managing director, and Philippe Le Houérou, the head of the bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation – are also notable absentees from Davos.

By a tradition that stretches back to the 1940s, the US chooses the head of the bank while the European nations pick the managing director of the IMF.

Since taking over less than a year ago, Malpass’s prioritisation of programmes for individual countries has led to suspicions in other international bodies that the bank is in effect being run from the White House. “There is no attempt to reach out to other institutions to look for system-level policy coherence,” according to one official in Davos.

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Those more sympathetic to Malpass said he was a shy man who did not know how to do smalltalk and hated events such as Davos.

A World Bank spokesman said: “The World Bank Group is focused squarely on efforts to alleviate poverty and boost living standards. We sent senior technical experts on climate and water to the World Economic Forum to participate in discussions on how to improve development outcomes in these priority areas.

“World Bank Group president Malpass has just returned from the UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020, where he met with over 10 leaders of several African countries to discuss challenges they face. He also engaged with private-sector clients and partners on local currency financing, capital markets, green financing and country-specific reforms that could be made to unlock private investment in developing countries.”