Career
In his early career, Schweitzer joined the French Government as an assistant Inspecteur des Finances (1936), before becoming an Inspecteur des Finances (1939). Then he was: Deputy Director for the Department of External Finance of the French Treasury (1946); Alternate Executive Director for France at the IMF (1947); Secretary of the French Interministerial Committee in Charge of Questions on European Economic Cooperation (1948); Financial Attaché at the French Embassy in Washington (1949-1953); Director of the French Treasury (1953-1960). In 1960, he was appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank of France. He also served as a Director of the European Investment Bank, a Director of Air France, and as a government commissioner on the boards of the French Petroleum Company and the French Refinery Company.
On June 21, 1963 Schweitzer was appointed Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board of the IMF, and he assumed his duties on September 1, 1963. Schweitzer was appointed to a second five-year term as Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of the IMF on May 15, 1968.
Schweitzer's term as the IMF's Managing Director was a critical period, not only due to the collapse of the Par Value System, but also for the creation of the special drawing rights (SDR), as an international reserve asset (1968); the establishment of the two-tier gold market, and the work of the Committee of Twenty of the International Monetary System on reforming the international financial system. Also, during his tenure as Managing Director of the IMF, its membership grew from 91 to 125 countries.
Schweitzer received many honors and decorations, such as the Commander of the Légion d'Honneur; the Médaille de la Résistance, and the Croix de Guerre.
Pierre-Paul Schweitzer died on January 2, 1994 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: Pierre-Paul Schweitzer
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)