In a surprise move, David Malpass, the president of the?World Bank, has said that?he would resign in June 2023, leaving open a job that oversees billions of dollars of funding and has a direct impact on poverty, climate change preparation, emergency aid, and other issues in developing countries around the globe.??
In a?press release?yesterday, the bank said "World Bank Group President David Malpass?informed the Board of Executive Directors of his intention to step down from his position by the end of the Bank Group’s fiscal year on June 30 after serving more than four years." He intends to pursue new challenges.
The World Bank has historically been headed by someone from the United States, the bank's largest shareholder, while a European heads the?International Monetary Fund, but?developing countries and emerging markets are pushing to widen those choices.
According to the bank's 2021 annual report, Malpass earned $525,000 in annual net salary that year, and the bank made more than $340,000 in annual contributions to a pension plan and other benefits, as per a Reuters report.
As the World Bank chief decides to leave earlier than his tenure's maturity, here are names being floated by U.S. officials, climate change experts, and global development peers as?possible candidates for the job of the World Bank's chief:
Samantha Power, who currently leads the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is a longtime human rights advocate, diplomat, and former journalist. The 52-year-old has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama and won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book "A Problem from Hell," a study of the U.S. failure to prevent a number of genocides over the past century.
49-year-old Rajiv Shah was the former USAID administrator under Obama and is currently president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic group that says it aims to "promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world." As per the report, the foundation recently partnered with the U.S. State Department on a carbon offset program at COP27, the international climate conference.
Shah was born to?Indian?Gujarati?immigrant parents who settled in Michigan.??
41-year-old Wally Adeyemo is the deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury and has played a lead role in coordinating sanctions and other measures against Russia to try to cut funding for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Minouche Shafik is an Egypt-born, British-American economist who is currently the president of the London School of Economics (LSE). The 60-year-old has also served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and deputy managing director of the IMF.
With less than four months left for the World Bank chief to resign in June 2023 and leave the position open, it remains to be seen whether any of these probable candidates get to head the bank or someone else comes into the picture and becomes World Bank President this year.
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