Brilliant and arrogant, charming and volcanically quick tempered, Jim Wolfensohn defies brief summary. He took the helm of the World Bank after an extraordinary career in finance and philanthropy: he led the bail out of Chrysler, founded his own Wall Street boutique, burnished a legendary global rolodex, and regularly purchased two seats on Concorde so that his cello could sit next to him. When he took the helm of the World Bank 10 years ago, he fused his own messianic ego with that of a crusading institution. The result was sometimes glorious and sometimes vainglorious. It certainly was not boring.
From the moment of his arrival, Wolfensohn challenged the status quo that he inherited. The World Bank had stoutly opposed debt relief. Wolfensohn put debt on the agenda. The World Bank had refused to discuss corruption. Wolfensohn demanded that poor countries get serious about fighting it. The World Bank had frequently talked down to smaller aid organizations. Wolfensohn sought to turn them into partners. The World Bank preached to poor countries from its gleaming headquarters in Washington. Wolfensohn rammed through a radical decentralization, and insisted that poor countries themselves should set their own development priorities.
Not all of this was popular. Wolfensohn’s management shake-up drove hundreds of seasoned officials out of the door, and turned his staff temporarily against him. His outreach to smaller development groups met with mixed results; the Bank remains a favourite whipping boy for the small activist groups that lead anti-globalization movement. Some of Wolfensohn’s initiatives – projects to promote culture, partnerships with religious leaders – distracted the Bank from its core poverty-fighting mission. But, all in all, Wolfensohn’s tenure has been a triumph. His passion and dynamism inserted the World Bank into the big dramas of the past decade: From the reconstruction of the Balkans to the Asian financial crisis to the engagement with failed states in the wake of September 11. His retirement is going to leave a hole, and the world is going to miss him.