CDB President to pay courtesy call on Prime Minister Douglas

Dr. William Warren Smith

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, AUGUST 29TH 2011 CUOPM) – President of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. William Warren Smith is to pay a courtesy call on St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas later this week.

Dr. Smith, who will be in Basseterre to attend the inauguration of Sir Charles Michael Dennis Byron as President of the Caribbean Court of Justice at Government, will be accompanied by Vice-President (Operations) Ag. Ms. Tessa Williams-Robertson.

The CDB President will pay a courtesy call on Prime Minister Douglas, who sits on the CDB Board of Governors’, on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at the Prime Minister’s Office.

Dr. Smith is the fifth President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the regional development finance institution based in Barbados.

He was elected at a special meeting of the CDB Board of Governors held on Friday October 29, 2010, and assumed office on May 1, 2011.

At the time of his election, Dr. Smith was acting in the capacity of Vice-President (Operations) at CDB. His substantive position on taking up that acting appointment from August 16, 2010, was Director, Finance and Corporate Planning.

Dr. Smith first joined CDB in 1985 and was seconded by the Bank in 1987 to set up the corporate planning function at the regional airline, LIAT (1974) Limited. He subsequently served as Chief Executive Officer of LIAT, before returning to CDB in 1998.

He has also held high-level positions at a number of other institutions in the Region. These include Director of the Economics and Planning Division at the Jamaica National Investment Company; and Vice-President, Investments at Life of Jamaica Limited, which was then the largest life insurance company in the Caribbean.

The President was educated at Cornell University in the United States of America, and graduated magna cum laude with an AB in Economics (Hon) in 1974. He went on to read for a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics, and for a Ph.D. in Resource Economics and Public Policy.

Dr. Smith is a national of Jamaica and is married to medical practitioner, Dr. Anne-Marie Irvine.