The Tribune

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has announced his intention to nominate entrepreneur and philanthropist William A Douglass as US ambassador to The Bahamas.

Mr Douglass, of Florida, founded K2 Advisors in 1994 and managed it for more than two decades before selling it to Franklin Templeton Investments in 2012.

Earlier in his career, Mr Douglass was managing director of Caspian Securities LLC. He also was a managing director for Tiedemann International Research for whom he first managed their office in Tokyo, Japan, and then co-managed their United States business in New York.

Mr Douglass has close ties to The Bahamas and has been visiting Eleuthera since 1962. He is the grandson of Pan Am founder and South Eleuthera resident Juan Trippe, who died in 1981.

Several years ago, Mr Douglass financed a $200,000 recreational basketball/volleyball court and rock climbing facility at the Wemyss Bight Primary School. After Hurricane Dorian, he made an appeal for Bahamians to receive US temporary work permits in order to recover from the storm.

This is the second choice President Trump has made for a US ambassador to The Bahamas. He initially selected Douglas Manchester, a real estate developer and billionaire, to fill the post. This selection was not without controversy.

In February 2018, Mr Manchester issued an apology after he was accused of having an unsettling management style that allegedly made some female employees uncomfortable. The allegations dated back to a time when Mr Manchester owned The San Diego Union-Tribune Television, a now defunct TV station he launched as owner of the Union-Tribune newspaper from late 2011 to 2015, according to international news reports.

After being nominated in May 2017, Mr Manchester’s nomination was stalled before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for some time.

Last year Mr Manchester withdrew his nomination citing threats against his family.