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Please join us for this conversation between Jacques Attali, founder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and president of PlaNet Finance, and Eric Abrahamson, professor of management at Columbia Business School, on how the principles of microfinance can provide a sound, ethical framework for global financial reform.

The lecture will be held in English and a reception with wine and hors d'oeuvre will follow. Dr. Attali's book, A Brief History of the Future, will also be available for purchase at $25 and proceeds will support PlaNet Finance.

Renaud Dutreil, chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc., will host the reception.

Event Information and Registration
Date:    Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Time:    The lecture will begin at 6:30 PM and will be followed by a reception at 7:30 PM
Place:   The Magic Room at the LVMH Tower, 19 East 57th Street, New York

Members of the French-American Foundation and French-American Chamber of Commerce are invited to attend the lecture free of charge, and non-members at $40. Should you have further questions about the lecture, please contact Eliza Waterman at ewaterman@frenchamerican.org.
 
Our Speakers
Jacques Attali
Dr. Attali is a professor, writer, and honorary member of the French Council of State. He advised President François Mitterrand from 1981-1991, before founding and serving as the first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1991-1993. In 2007 Dr. Attali led the “Attali Commission,” a panel commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy to suggest structural reforms to encourage economic growth in France. Three quarters of its recommendations are now being implemented. Dr. Attali is the founder and president of PlaNet Finance, an international organization fostering the development of microfinance in 80 countries by providing technical assistance, rating, financing, and other kinds of expertise and support. (http://us.planetfinancegroup.org, http://www.planetfinancegroup.org)

Throughout his career, Dr. Attali has spearheaded numerous international initiatives with considerable global reach. In 1980 he founded Action Contre la Faim, an organization that combats malnutrition and hunger, as well as the European programme Eurêka, a major European initiative on innovation that developed, among other technologies, the MP3.  In 1989 he launched an international relief effort for victims of the disastrous floods in Bangladesh. His 1998 report on higher education became the basis for Europe-wide education reform, known as LMD, which coordinated European academic degrees.

Dr. Attali is an editorialist for the magazine L’Express and has written fifty books, translated into more than twenty languages. Over 6 million copies of his books have been sold all over the world, including essays (on subjects ranging from economics to music) biographies, novels, children’s tales, and plays.  In the May/June 2008 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, he was named one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.

Dr. Attali holds a doctorate in economics and is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole des Mines, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and the Ecole Nationale de l’Administration. He has taught economic theory at the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, and the University of Paris-Dauphine.  He has received honorary doctorates from several foreign universities and is a member of the Universal Academy of Cultures.

Eric Abrahamson
Dr. Abrahamson studies the creation, spread, use, and rejection of innovative techniques for managing organizations and their employees. He is best known for his work on fads and fashions in management techniques and he is an expert on the management of organizational change. He has explored the topic of change management in Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) which won a Best Book of the Year award from Strategy and Business magazine.

Dr. Abrahamson has studied the dynamics of moderately messy systems—offices, organizations and even industrial districts—that would function less well were they any less messy or any more orderly. He recently co-authored a book with David Freedman that popularizes these ideas about the benefits of moderately messy system: A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How cluttered closets, jumbled offices, and on-the-fly planning make the world a better place (Little, Brown and Company, 2007). He lectures and consults on these topics for companies around the world.