ABSTRACT
A board of governors formally administers the Bank. The governors come together only in the spring and especially at the jamboree Bank-Fund annual general meeting in the autumn. The five EDs representing the Bank’s major shareholders, the US, Japan, Germany, the UK and France, are appointed by their governments. The Bank’s executive directors are virtually unknown even in their home countries yet shoulder great responsibilities. They approve all the Bank’s loans, whether from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or grants from the International Development Association. Some served as alternate directors for the same country group they serve as EDs; others occupied top administrative or policy positions in the Bank itself. Lack of board cohesion may be partly due to having doubled the number of members since the Bank’s origins. The directors necessarily rely on the Bank’s professional staff and the information they obtain will be as good as the staff wants it to be.
