Peter Sutherland, the Irish chairman of US investment bank Goldman Sachs and of British Petroleum (BP), won the 2005 award for outstanding achievement from the Ireland-US Council for Commerce and Industry in New York in recognition of his services to international business and trade.
"There are few more distinguished figures in European and American business circles than Peter Sutherland and few names that command more respect," said Brian Goggin, Bank of Ireland's chief executive and the president of the council's Irish chapter.
Mr Goggin was speaking at the awards ceremony during the Council's 43rd annual dinner at New York's Metropolitan Club.
The council was set up in 1963 by American and Irish business leaders to help forge business links between the two countries.
Mr Sutherland has served as attorney general, European competition commissioner, and as head of the World Trade Organisation. As chairman of BP in the late 1990s, Mr Sutherland oversaw what was then the largest industrial merger ever when the UK company merged with Amoco.
As competition commissioner, Mr Sutherland deserved "much of the credit for the deregulation of Europe's airline industry, which has benefited tens of millions of consumers with cheaper air travel," Mr Goggin said.
