The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. RICHARD SAMANS is Managing Director of the World Economic Forum's Centre for Public-Private Partnership, responsible for the Forum's public-private partnership initiatives and its relations with governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other non-business constituencies. Working at the Forum since early 2001, he directs the Forum's Centre for Public-Private Partnership and advises on the global issues program content of Forum meetings and other activities. Before joining the Forum, he served as Special Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy in the US White House. As a senior member of the National Economic Council staff and Senior Director of the National Security Council's International Economic Affairs directorate, he assisted President Clinton on abroad range of international trade and financial policy matters. Previously, he served as Economic Policy Advisor to former US Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), assisting him and the Senate Democratic Caucus on international trade and financial, fiscal, and other economic policy issues. Rick started his career as an international banker and has served in a number of additional capacities in government, the private sector and research institutions. MARC UZAN is the Executive Director of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee, an organization which he founded in 1994. The Committee is a think-tank focusing on issues related to international financial architecture through a regular dialogue between markets and governments. He also coordinates the activities of the Euro50Group. He is editor of a number of prominent publications, including Financial System Under Stress - A Nex Architecture of the World Economy (1996), Private Capital Flows in the Age of Globalisation (2000), Capital Flows without Crisis?(2001), The Future of the International Monetary System (2004), and a handbook on the international financial architecture with Nouriel Roubini. He is the author of several academic papers on the new architecture for the international financial system. He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics of the University of California, Berkeley. AUGUSTO LOPEZ- CLAROS has been Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum since 2003, and Director of its Global Competitiveness Program, a research project whose aim is to determine the impediments to economic growth in more than 120 countries. In this capacity he has engaged senior policymakers in government and the business community on the policy and institutional requirements associated with improvements in the investment climate. Before joining the Forum, he was Executive Director and Senior International Economist with Lehman Brothers International inLondon. Earlier he was in the staff of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, serving from 1992 to 1995 as Resident Representative in the Russian Federation. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Duke University (USA), and a degree in mathematical statistics from Cambridge University, England. He is a frequent commentator on economic and financial issues, having given over 150 interviews during the last seven years on all the major networks. He has written extensively on a broad range of economic and financial issues, including those affecting transition economies, aspects of economic integration and development challenges confronting emerging markets. He has an abiding interest in the growth and development of global interdependence and cooperation and the importance of international institutions in their principal role of promoting and safeguarding human prosperity.
