Mr Hugh O'Flaherty's prospective colleagues on the management committee of the European Investment Bank are a mixture of politicians and civil servants, all with experience in either economics or finance.
Mr Philippe Maystadt (51), who was appointed president of the bank in January, was Belgium's deputy prime minister and minister for finance from 1996 to 1998.
He was elected president of the Christian Socialist party after relinquishing his position. He has a degree in law and economics from the Catholic University of Louvain.
Dr Rudolf de Korte (64), who leaves the bank at the end of the month and will not be replaced, was deputy prime minister and minister for economic affairs in the Netherlands between 1986 and 1989. He was a member of parliament between 1990 and 1995.
Austria's representative, Mr Ewald Nowotny (56), was professor of economics at the University of Vienna and a Social Democratic Party member of parliament since 1978.
He was appointed to the bank last September. He is on the board of a number of Austrian banks and insurance companies.
Mr Wolfgang Roth (59) is an economist and a former member of the German Bundestag. At one stage he was the SDP spokesman on economic policy. He has been vice-president of the bank since 1993.
Mr Luis Marti (64) held a number of jobs in the Spanish civil service since joining the Ministry of Trade in 1961. Before his appointment in 1993 he was an adviser to the Spanish minister of economy and finance.
Mr Panagiotis-Loukas Gennimatas (51) is a lawyer. He was an adviser to the Greek ministry of the merchant marine from 1974 to 1976 and a special adviser to to the prime minister of Greece between 1980 and 1981.
He held a number of other advisory roles and in 1983 became a senior adviser to the Bank of Greece. He is stepping down at the end of June.
Mr Francis Mayer (50) also joined the board in September. He was a career civil servant with the French treasury, where he was head of the international affairs department. He was previously head of financial markets.
Since 1997 he has been chairman of the Paris Club, a group of 19 large creditor states which arranges the rescheduling of Third World debt.
The British representative, Mr Peter Sedgwick (56), is a career civil servant. He started work with the bank in January when he left his job as a deputy director in the public spending directorate at the Treasury. Mr Massimo Ponzellini (50) is a one-time personal assistant to Mr Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission.
He has been an economic adviser to several Italian governments and director of a number of companies, including Alitalia. He was involved in the setting up of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
