Bill Clinton to resume leadership summits put on hold since 2016
BNN Bloomberg
Former President Bill Clinton plans to convene his signature gathering of business, government and philanthropic leaders in New York this September, according to a letter sent Friday to supporters of his charitable foundation.
Former President Bill Clinton plans to convene his signature gathering of business, government and philanthropic leaders in New York this September, according to a letter sent Friday to supporters of his charitable foundation.
The Clinton Global Initiative hosted annual meetings from 2005 to 2016, with the final meeting held less than two months before Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. During the 2016 campaign, the foundation faced scrutiny over whether its efforts to raise millions of dollars from governments and major companies benefited from her White House bid and her role as secretary of state in the Obama administration.
Overall fundraising for the Clinton Foundation, which also includes the Clinton Development Initiative and the presidential center in Little Rock, Arkansas, has dropped since Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump. It reported US$16.3 million in contributions in 2020, down from its 2016 peak of US$62.9 million, according to tax filings.
CGI asks participants to make specific and measurable commitments toward major world challenges. In Friday’s letter, Clinton, 75, said its model of “cooperation and coordination has never been more urgent than it is now.”
As Clinton ended CGI, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his foundation’s Bloomberg Global Business Forum. It began in 2017 with a speech by Clinton and continued in 2018 and 2019. The conference was not held the past two years because of the pandemic, but there are plans to reconvene in September 2022. Michael Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
