German Chancellor Angela Merkel will join the prime ministers of both Britain and Russia, David Cameron and Dmitry Medvedev, as top participants at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, the founder of the annual winter meeting said on Wednesday.

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Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the forum he created more than 40 years ago, said some 50 heads of governments and state are set to attend the January 23rd-27th meeting in the small Swiss town.
 
Neither China nor the United States will be represented at the same high level as Germany, Britain and Russia amid the change in leadership in Beijing and Barack Obama's start of his second term as US President.

France will be represented by "two of its most important ministers," finance minister Pierre Moscovici and innovation minister Fleur Pellerin, and
will also bring a delegation of business leaders, Borge Brende, director general of the Forum said.
 
Organizers have said that this year's Forum will focus on global health issues under the theme of "Resilient Dynamism."

Health ministers and more than 25 heads of healthcare companies are also due to attend.
   
The poster names of the meeting include Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, Jim Yong Kim, head of the World Bank, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund as well as Mario Draghi, the chief of the European Central Bank.
   
Schwab, now 74 years old, founded the Davos Forum in 1971.

This year, it will celebrate its 43rd edition.
 
The meeting gathers some of the world's leading politicians and economists and is viewed as a global think tank forum.