World Bank Tenure and Other Public Service
Wolfensohn became president of the World Bank on 1 July 1995 after he was nominated by U.S. President Bill Clinton. He was unanimously supported by the bank's board of executive directors to a second five-year term in 2000, becoming the third person to serve two terms in the position after Eugene R. Black and Robert McNamara. He visited more than 120 countries around the world during his term as president. He is credited, among other things, with being the first World Bank president to bring attention to the problem of corruption in the area of development financing.
On 3 January 2005, he announced that he would not seek a third term as president. During his term, the Alfalfa Club named him as their nominee for President of the United States in 2000 as part of a long-standing tradition, despite being constitutionally ineligible due to the natural-born citizen clause in Article II of the United States Constitution.
He also currently serves as an advisor to the Grassroots Business Fund
Read more about this topic: James Wolfensohn
Famous quotes containing the words world, bank, tenure, public and/or service:
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“... an adamantine island chained to the shifting bank of the Channel.”
—Christina Stead (19021983)
“A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (19111978)
“Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Finally, your lengthy service ended,
Lay your weariness beneath my laurel tree.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658)