William R. Rhodes

William R. "Bill" Rhodes is the Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc. and the Chairman of Citigroup and Citibank.

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He is also Chairman of the Board of both the Americas Society and its affiliate, the Council of the Americas, which were originally founded by David Rockefeller in 1965, and is a board member of the Group of Thirty.

Rhodes was educated at Northfield Mount Hermon, a college preparatory school, and Brown University; he joined Citibank in 1957. As the Senior International Officer for Citigroup, Mr. Rhodes has specific responsibilities for client relationships in emerging markets worldwide, relationships with governments and other official institutions and appointments of Citibank's senior country officers outside the U.S.

Mr. Rhodes gained a reputation for international financial diplomacy in the 1980s for his leadership in helping manage the external-debt crisis that involved many developing nations and their creditors worldwide. During that period and in the 1990s he headed the advisory committees of international banks that negotiated debt-restructuring agreements for Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. In 1998, when The Republic of Korea experienced liquidity problems, Mr. Rhodes chaired the international bank group that negotiated the extension of short-term debt of the Korean banking system. In early 1999, at the request of the Government of Brazil, he acted as worldwide coordinator implementing the maintenance of trade and interbank lines by foreign commercial banks to Brazil.

A native of New York City, Mr. Rhodes joined Citibank in 1957 following graduation from Brown. He served in a variety of senior positions in Latin America and the Caribbean for 20 years prior to returning to New York in 1977 as head of the Latin American corporate business. He was Senior Executive-International before being named a Director and Vice Chairman on July 16, 1991.

Mr. Rhodes is a Director of ConocoPhillips; a Director of the Private Export Funding Corporation; Vice Chairman of the Institute of International Finance; Chairman of the Hong Kong-U.S. Business Council; Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations; a Director of the US-Russia Business Council, and a member of South African President Thabo Mbeki's International Advisory Board and Colombian President Uribe's Advisory Board. Other board memberships include The Africa-America Institute, Foreign Policy Association, and the US-Egypt Presidents' Council.

He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Economic Club of New York, the Hong Kong / U.S. Business Council and a founding member of the U.S. National Advisory Council to the International Management Center in Budapest, Hungary. Mr. Rhodes is a past Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States; past Chairman of the U.S. section of the Venezuela-U.S. Business Council; past President of the Venezuela-American Chamber of Commerce; and past President of the Bankers Association for Foreign Trade.

He is a Governor and Trustee of The New York and Presbyterian Hospital; a member of the Lincoln Center Consolidated Corporate Fund Leadership Committee and a Vice Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Business Committee and Chairman's Committee. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Northfield Mount Hermon School and a member of the Board of Overseers of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown. In 2007, Rhodes donated $10 million to Brown for the establishment of the Rhodes Center for International Economics at the Watson Institute.

See also

• David Rockefeller
• Group of Thirty
• Council of the Americas