Jacques de Larosière de Champfeu is a French former civil servant who served as the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1993 to 1998. He previously served as the governor of the Banque de France from 1987 to 1993. Before that appointment, he was also the sixth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1978 to 1987

Horst Köhler is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, as well as the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Convention on 23 May 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on 1 July 2004. He was reelected to a second term on 23 May 2009. Just a year later, on 31 May 2010, he resigned from his office in a controversy over a comment on the role of the German Bundeswehr in light of a visit to the troops in Afghanistan. During his tenure as president, whose office is mostly concerned with ceremonial matters, Köhler was a highly popular politician, with approval rates above those of both Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and later Chancellor Angela Merkel.