Dr. Bertrand Renaud is an internationally known expert with extensive experience in housing and housing finance issues in emerging and advanced markets. He has worked in some 40 countries that cover the full range of housing and development from the most basic stage to the most advanced system. He began his professional career as a specialist of urban development in Asia. He then joined the team of four experts who wrote the seminal urban strategy paper for the World Bank when that institution began focusing on urban development issues. In the early 1980s, he was appointed the first Head of the Urban Affairs at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) when industrial countries were confronted with the need to comprehensively rethink their urban policies. Upon his return to the World Bank, Dr. Renaud promoted housing finance activities as a key component of the urban agenda. He became Advisor in the Financial Development Department of the World Bank when financial sector development became a core component of the development agenda in the early 1990s. There he has provided policy advice to governments on strategic, operational and technical issues of financial reforms for over a decade. He has also actively participated in, or reviewed major World Bank operations. Dr. Renaud continues to advise government institutions and private groups in various part of the world.

Dr. Renaud's work has often taken place in periods of important changes in national housing systems when governments wanted to evaluate their options in terms of legal and regulatory infrastructure, institutions, instruments as well as their economic and social impacts. He led the first World Bank mission to China on urban reforms in 1988. His work on Russia's urban reform options was internationally recognized with the award of the 1995 Donald Robertson Memorial Prize in the UK. Throughout his career, he has maintained a continuing interest in Asia urban development. Dr. Renaud has taught and done research in major universities in Asia, the US and Europe including MIT, Hong Kong University and Seoul National University. He has published extensively. His recent books include Markets at Works, The Dynamics of the Residential Real Estate Market in Hong Kong (HKU Press 1997) and Asia's Financial Crisis and the Role of Real Estate (ME Sharpe 2000). One of his latest articles appears in Asset Price Bubbles (MIT Press 2003).

Dr. Renaud received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, and the degree of Ingépinieur INA in Paris, France.