Peter Sutherland

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Peter Denis Sutherland, KCMG (born April 25, 1946) is an Irish businessman and former politician, associated with the Fine Gael party. He is a barrister by profession, and is also Senior Counsel.

A graduate of University College Dublin where he was rugby club captain, Sutherland was appointed Attorney General of Ireland in the governments of Garret FitzGerald, and as a European Commissioner when he was a member of the first Delors Commission. Subsequently he was Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organisation). During his second term as Attorney General, he advised the FitzGerald government on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland which introduced a constitutional ban on abortion.

He is currently serving as Chairman of both BP and Goldman Sachs International (a registered UK broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs), and is a non-executive director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. He has formerly served on the board of ABB.

He is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, a chairman of the Trilateral Commission[1] and vice chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists.[2]

He is a member of the Comite d'Honneur of the Institute of European Affairs, and an Honorary President of the European Movement Ireland.[3]

He was appointed as a member of the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Council of International Advisers in the years of 1998-2005[4].

He is Chairman of The Ireland Fund of Great Britain, part of The Ireland Funds.[5]

In 2005, he was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.[6]

He was not reappointed to the Commission by the Irish government, which had by then changed to Fianna Fáil. When Delors stepped down as Commission President he was widely reported to favour Sutherland as his successor; however he did not have a vote, and only the member states did. The British government, after briefly sponsoring its own candidate Leon Brittan, suggested Sutherland, but his candidacy would have needed the sponsorship of the Irish government to prosper, and Fianna Fáil was still in power.

Peter Sutherland (left) speaking with Garret FitzGerald (centre) and Will Hutton (right), at the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin in 2006.

In Spring 2006 he was appointed Chair of London School of Economics Council commencing in 2008.[7]. There has been some disquiet among LSE students over this appointment, generally due to his links with big business, and specifically due to the alleged poor human rights and environmental record of BP.

Peter Sutherland also serves on the International Advisory Board of IESE, the eminent graduate business school of the prestigious Spanish university, the University of Navarra. He recently wrote an article for LSE Magazine in which he acknowledged the existence of climate change refugees, which was perceived as ironic given that he is the Chair of BP. Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted springs to mind.

In January 2006, Sutherland was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan as his Special Representative for Migration. In this position, he was responsible for promoting the establishment of a Global Forum on Migration and Development, a state-led effort open to all UN members that is meant to help governments better understand how migration can benefit their development goals. The Global Forum was acclaimed by UN Member States at the UN High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development, in September 2006, and will be launched in Brussels in July 2007.

On December 5th, 2006, he was appointed 'Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See' (a financial adviser to the Vatican).[8]

[edit] Political career