“If you have the wealth, you have to share it,” was the motto of former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, a staunch, selfish, extremely confident and staunch interlocutor, but basically a good man. and spiritual. Wolfensohn, who died at 86, made a lot of money and gave a lot.
The highlight of his career was his two terms as president of the World Bank, between 1995 and 2005, where his enthusiasm and passion for the fight against poverty left an indelible mark. Unafraid to face the reality that many of the World Bank loans ended up in anonymous bank accounts abroad held by the beneficiaries, he created an anti-corruption task force, unthinkable before. his arrival for fear of legitimizing criticism of the bank and potentially denigrating innocent people. borrowers.
Yet it went ahead, reconfiguring the bank’s lending program to acknowledge another reality: Too many less developed countries were too poor to pay back their loaned and owed loans. be canceled. Heralding current concerns, he expanded the bank’s loan programs from exclusively supporting the physical infrastructure of dams, power generation and ports, to the social infrastructure of education, particularly women.
To consolidate this new direction, it launched the Comprehensive Development Framework to provide recipient countries with comprehensive parameters to assess their economic and social progress. This approach takes into account education and health standards and growth in per capita income.
His presidency of the bank was a key moment. Education, public health and the empowerment of women were and are as essential to economic development as electricity, railways, and roads.
Wolfensohn was always on the move: when in Washington he was “walking the floor” of bank offices joking and joking, or probably on a plane, his beloved cello would often sit next to him, visiting bank customers. world – he has visited 120 countries in total – where he would infallibly call things by name, however embarrassing the comment was. “What is the difference between God and James Wolfensohn?” He made a joke in Washington. “God is everywhere, Wolfensohn too, but never here!”
He said his passion for tackling inequality, reducing poverty and giving money as a philanthropist is rooted in his modest upbringing in a two-bedroom apartment in a Sydney suburb, which brought him to life. perhaps also given the ambition to lead his whole life.
His parents, Hyman Wolfensohn and Dora Weinbaum, had immigrated to Australia in 1928 after his father’s career in banking at Rothschild drowned, never to leave again, although he retained an affection for the Rothschilds. She was smart and hyper-ambitious: at school she sang the roles of young women in Gilbert and Sullivan operas to get noticed and as a natural athlete she represented Australia at the 1956 Olympics as a valued member of the fencing team.
He would say that seeing his Jewish parents, despite their relative poverty, welcomed as refugees from Nazi Germany inflamed him with a lifelong sympathy for the homeless, and being an Olympian gave him inner confidence at home. the height of his ambition. It was good enough to climb the heights.
After the University of Sydney, he turned to Harvard Business School, recognizing that a Harvard MBA would be a passport to the City of London that a law degree in Sydney alone would not provide him. So it turned out. After a few false starts, he landed a job at the fast-growing boutique and commercial bank Darling and Co.
It was also at Harvard that he met Elaine Botwinick. They married in 1961 and had three children.
Darling and Co proved to be a stepping stone to Schroders, where his affability and cold gaze for what was and was not good business earned him a growing list of clients. In 1970, he was destined for higher things if he could seize the opportunity to expand Schroders’ operations to New York, where he was spectacularly successful, thanks to a contact book and his love. entertainment, already becoming something of a legend.
But Schroders, in 1976, was unwilling to offer the chief executive officer of his New York operations the highest position in the bank, preferring the British aristocrat Lord Airlie to Wolfensohn.
Reading the runes, he left to join Salomon Brothers, rising to the top, confirming his dazzling impact on Wall Street investment banking. It was the rescheduling of Chrysler’s debts in 1979 that saved the automaker from bankruptcy and, in particular, persuaded Japanese banks to continue lending, that caught the double eye of Wall Street and establishment titans. democrat.
He was a man who could marry high finance, good values, and high politics, and put alchemy for constructive purposes. He was proposed to become president of the World Bank, but the Republicans won the presidency, and although he assumed American citizenship to secure his chances (only Americans are nominated for the presidency of the World Bank), he missed the opportunity.
He once again reinvented himself, but as the founder of his own investment firm, Wolfensohn Inc. For the next 14 years, he amassed his fortune and would double as a great new philanthropist. York and Washington. He presided over Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts in Washington.
In a typical combination of self-aggrandizement, genuine affection for music and generosity towards Jacqueline de Pré, struggling with multiple sclerosis, who wanted to renew his life, he took lessons from her on the cello. They were released on the condition that he perform publicly, which he did when he turned 50, 60 and 70 years old.
Bill Clinton’s presidency – they were inevitably friends – was to give him the opportunity he dreamed of at the World Bank, and in 1995 he assumed the presidency. Awarded with honors from Britain, the United States, Germany and his native Australia, he experienced a happy semi-retirement in 2005 that combined philanthropy and consulting, abandoning the role of envoy for peace in the Middle. -Oriente after 11 months because, he said, he couldn’t do anything useful.
Elaine died in August. He is survived by a son and two daughters.
• James David Wolfensohn, banker, born December 1, 1933; passed away on November 25, 2020
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