After graduating from Worcester College, Oxford in 1974 in politics, economics and philosophy (PPE) David has worked for nearly 34 years in the European Commission from 1977- 2011. He held a variety of posts including at the beginning of his career responsibility for oil and gas data in the Statistical Office, Luxembourg (1977-1981) during the second oil crisis; energy policy coordination and modelling in the Directorate General for Energy, Brussels (1982-1987); and then industrial trade policy negotiations during the Uruguay multilateral trade round (1987-1989). From 1989-1992 he was a member of President Delors’ “”Think Tank”” called the “”Cellule de Prospectives”” where he worked on industrial policy and wrote the first Commission document on sustainable development. In this period he co-authored a book with Professor Alexis Jacquemin on the post-1992 EU political and economic agenda called “”Shaping factors, shaping actors””.
From 1993-1994 he was a member of Sir Leon Brittans’ Cabinet and worked on various aspects of trade and industrial policy, including completion of the Uruguay Round in 1994. In 1995 he became an Adviser to President Jacques Santer in his Cabinet – covering competitiveness, industrial and telecom policies, political relations with the UK and Ireland, financial services, risk capital and various other trade and foreign policy briefs. From March 2000 – October 2010 he was first Director, then Deputy Director-General for securities and financial markets, then for all financial services policy in DG Internal Market and Services. He helped design and drive forward the Financial Services Action Plans to integrate the EU’s capital and financial services markets. He was the rapporteur for both the Lamfalussy (2000/1) and De LaRosière Committees (2008/9), chaired the Securities and Banking Committees and represented the Commission in the Financial Services Committee and in various FSB/G20 fora. He also played a leading role in the EU-US financial markets dialogue in this period. He was the EU Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford until July 2011 and was a Member of the European Commission’s Task force on Greece until the end of January 2012. David Wright’s appointment as Secretary General of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) commenced on 15 March 2012. David Wright left IOSCO in March 2016 and is now the Chairman of EUROFI, Paris, a partner of Flint-Global, London and a public interest Director of the Bombay Stock Exchange, India.
David Wright was vice-chair of the Commissions’ High Level Forum on CMU which reported in April 2020.
