U.S. to ‘quickly’ nominate candidate to lead World Bank, Yellen says

By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal

BENGALURU/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States intends to “quickly” nominate a candidate for the World Bank presidency who is committed to the lender’s poverty reduction mission as well as lending reforms to fight climate change and other global challenges, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday.

At a news conference ahead of a G20 finance leaders meeting on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Yellen declined to name the U.S. nominee or say whether the candidate would be a woman.

The World Bank’s executive board plans to open nominations for the development lender’s top job later on Thursday, and said it “would strongly encourage women candidates to be nominated.”

The board expects to choose a new candidate by early May, replacing current president David Malpass, who said he will step down by early June, well before his term ends in April 2024.

One of the surprise top contenders for the post is Indian-American Ajay Banga, who retired in December 2021 after 12 years at the helm of Mastercard, and co-chairs the Partnership for Central America, where he worked closely with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to mobilize public, private and non-profit resources for Northern Central America.

Two sources familiar with the process said Banga was seen as an ideal leader for the World Bank, given his ability to bring together private and public organizations and his focus on inclusive growth.

Other names include Samantha Power, who leads the U.S. Agency for International Development and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, and Rajiv Shah, former USAID administrator under Obama who now heads the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic group.

The U.S. Treasury manages the dominant U.S. shareholding in the World Bank, giving Yellen strong influence over who leads the institution. Since the World Bank’s founding at the end of World War Two, the United States has traditionally chosen the bank’s leader, while Europe has chosen the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Yellen said the U.S. candidate will have the qualifications needed to lead the world’s largest development lender and be committed to lending reforms to fight climate change, pandemics and other global challenges while preserving the bank’s longstanding work to reduce poverty.

“We intend to quickly put forward a well-qualified candidate. And I don’t have any updates for you on who that might be, stay tuned,” Yellen said.

(Reporting by David Lawder, Andrea Shalal and Aftab Ahmed; Writing by David Lawder and Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Miral Fahmy, Simon Cameron-Moore and Chizu Nomiyama)