World Bank head tried to improve the planet
He strove to ‘put a smile on a child’s face’
James Wolfensohn, the urbane investment banker who focused a life’s experience in politics and finance on remaking the World Bank as its president, died Tuesday . He was 86.
A native Australian, Wolfensohn was characterized as a modern Renaissance man, as comfortable with top figures in the arts as with global business leaders and politicians.
When in 1977 he joined Salomon Bros. in New York, he was put in charge of advising Chrysler as it neared bankruptcy, and helped arrange what was then the largest corporate bailout in U.S. history. He also smoothed over a cultural rift between combustible Chr y s l e r chief Lee Iacocca and the Japanese bankers who had loaned it US$600 million.
After receiving $ 10 million when Salomon was sold, Wolfensohn started a boutique consulting firm. But early sales trips to India and Nigeria had left “an indelible mark.
“The inequity was so striking I could hardly absorb ( it),” he wrote in his 2010 memoir, A Global Life.
As a result, he set his sights on the World Bank presidency. He acquired U. S. citizenship and in 1995 went to work lobbying President Bill Clinton.
Though Wolfensohn led a powerful institution, he was apt to break into tears at World Bank work sites in remote villages. He famously said the organization’s aim was to “put a smile on a child’s face.”
He also shattered taboos — the bank accepted corruption as part of the cost of doing business in some places. One of his first speeches was on “the cancer of corruption.” The bank now cancels projects involving bribes.
James David Wolfensohn was born in Sydney on Dec. 1, 1933. His successes seemed to come not through genius but intense application.
Having joined the university fencing team, for example, he practised hard enough to gain a spot on the Australian Olympic squad.
While at Harvard Business School, he met Elaine Botwinick; they later wed and had three children. She died in August.
In 1980, Wolfensohn became chairman of Carnegie Hall and later of the Kennedy Center. Wolfensohn received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in 1995 for services to the arts.