Almost from his first day on the job, Dr. Witteveen had been pressing for the fund to be given the task of supervising the new floating exchange rate regime, to ensure stability and to prevent countries from manipulating their exchange rates to win a competitive advantage against their trading partners.
And after long negotiations with France, which favored a return to fixed currency exchange rates, and the United States, which favored free-floating rates, Dr. Witteveen was able to announce an agreement in 1975 formally giving the I.M.F. the task of “exercising firm surveillance” over the world’s new and more flexible exchange rate system.
Hendrikus Johannes Witteveen was born on June 12, 1921, in Zeist, a Dutch town east of Utrecht. He served in the Dutch Planning Bureau before becoming a professor of economics at the University of Rotterdam and entering Dutch politics.
Dr. Witteveen surprised governments and the fund’s staff by announcing in September 1977, a year before his term expired, that he would not seek a second term. Apparently feeling that he had done all he could to help the world weather the big oil-price shocks of the early 1970s, he stuck to his decision despite being urged to stay on by President Jimmy Carter.
Back in the Netherlands, he held a number of business positions. He served on the international council of Morgan Guaranty Trust and the European advisory council of General Motors, and as an adviser to the Amro Bank.
From 1978 to 1985 he was the first chairman of the Group of Thirty, a Washington-based nonprofit economics research organization drawing from the private, public and academic sectors. He was also a longtime member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He married Liesbeth de Vries Feijens, who was a professor of oncology at the University of Groningen’s medical center in the Netherlands. She died in 2006. There was no immediate information on his survivors.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/obituaries/h-johannes-witteveen-dead.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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