“As I begin my 88th year, I have decided to step down as chairman and board member, effective immediately,” Klaus Schwab wrote in a statement released on Monday. He is being replaced on an interim basis by board vice-chairman and former Nestlé boss Peter Brabeck-Letmathe.

Børge Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister, is the forum’s executive director.

“The board acknowledged the outstanding achievements of the retired chairman and founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab. He created the leading global platform for dialogue and progress, and the Board expressed its gratitude for his 55 years of relentless leadership at the helm of the forum,” the statement continued. The board also underlined “the importance of remaining steadfast in its mission and values as a facilitator of progress.”

Schwab was born in Ravensburg, Germany on 30 March 1938. He was a professor of business management at the University of Geneva, where he taught until 2003, when he launched the “European Management Forum,” the forerunner of today’s WEF forum. He then expanded it by inviting American business leaders, succeeding in building up a gigantic address book and transforming the meeting into a major international rave dedicated to business relations and the exchange of ideas.

Over the years, the Davos Forum has flown from success to success, attracting the world’s economic and political elite to roundtable discussions in the Swiss Alps.

This article was originally published in .