SPEAKER: Mr Jacques Attali
Former President of the European Commission

Jacques Attali was recently appointed by President Sarkozy to Head the Commission promoting growth in the French Economy.

He was formerly a special adviser to President Mitterand, then later Founder and first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is currently Founder and President of PlaNet Finance, an international non-profit organisation using the Internet against poverty focusing on structuring the micro-finance sector. He is also Chairman of an investment bank and private equity vehicle specialising in the development of European IT start-ups, from software to genomics.

Jacques is a man of action and reflection and an economic theorist with degrees from the elite French “grandes écoles,”. He has taught economics at several leading French universities.

He is the author of over fifty books on topics ranging from mathematical economy to music to novels, songs, short stories and theatre plays, translated into more than twenty languages. His main work in economics and sociology has been on the main trends in human history and their use to forecast the future. He forecast the global economic crisis back in 2006.

In his book “Millenium, published in 1990, Jacques created the concept of “nomad society” to characterise the nature of future civilisation. This theory of “nomadism” was not only a spark for the creation of the Java programming language by Bill Joy and John Gage at Sun Microsystems, but also for the titanium-clad Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by architect Frank Gehry.

In 1984 Jacques Attali created “Eureka,” the main European program on new technologies, and in 1989 he launched an international action program against massive floods in Bangladesh.

Jacques Attali is a brilliant and emotive speaker. A true “Renaissance Man,” he addresses a wide range of subjects, whether they be economic, political or philosophic.