Letter of rejection of the US nomination of Ajay Banga, former Mastercard chief, to be World Bank president

Civil society organisations from around the world reject the nomination of Mr. Banga for World Bank president and call for an end of the gentlemen’s agreement. 

We, the undersigned organisations, are appalled that in the context of calls for a democratisation of the governance in the World Bank, and the global consensus of the need for climate and economic justice, the US government nominated Ajay Banga on Thursday 23 February, former MasterCard CEO, to become World Bank president. We reject the nomination of Mr. Banga for World Bank president.

Banga, vice-chair of US private equity group General Atlantic and former chief executive of MasterCard until the end of 2020, was nominated by Joe Biden despite his explicit lack of credentials to lead the World Bank Group towards seriously tackling the generational challenges of climate change and global inequality. A Wall Street veteran, with no demonstrated development experience, Banga lacks the credibility to lead the World Bank in its stated objective of promoting sustainable development and eradicating poverty, or in addressing economic and social rights of the most vulnerable communities, let alone climate change. Banga’s current and past affiliations include being Chairman of the Board at Exor (a Dutch investment holding company) and Director at Temasek (Singapore’s state-owned investment fund), both of which invest in fossil fuel projects. He also benefited from Trump-era tax cuts by cashing in on share sales after the tax cuts had allowed MasterCard to inflate its own share price through buybacks.

The profile of this nominee could not be further away from what the world needs in the current context of multifaceted crises and environmental emergencies. The World Bank is not a private equity firm. The nomination of yet another investment banker illustrates how deeply Wall Street financiers remain embedded in leadership, advisory, stakeholder and many other key positions across international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund.

The nomination demonstrates another dangerous step towards the Wall Street Climate Consensus, where private sector investors take the leading role in financing and governing the supposed “green transition”, while public institutions, including the World Bank, are relegated to derisking private investments in a show of “subsidised greenwashing”. In the context of a Global South debt crisis and hard-hitting austerity measures, the derisking agenda further erodes what is left of the developmental state and the prioritisation of a public budget for economic and social rights and needs.

Banga’s focus on financial markets access and instruments, particularly green bonds, for financing climate and sustainable development investments would only exacerbate the current extractive dynamic, in which scarce public financial resources are massively being diverted from education, health or social protection budgets to repay private bondholders and commercial banks. His appointment is a message from the Biden administration that the World Bank should continue channeling critical sums of public financing to private interests, as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has been doing for decades.

The nomination by the US government makes clearer than ever the need for a truly merit-based, transparent and open selection process – not just on paper. The World Bank’s next leader must serve billions of people living in poverty and tackle the growing multiple climate, inequality and economic crises in a just, equitable and systemic manner. The world needs a World Bank President who prioritises public financing for public investments and public services, reverses the austerity wave, supports economic diversification and the nurture of domestic productive sectors, and promotes fair resolution to sovereign debt distress, including multilateral debt cancellation when needed. The only way to ensure this leader has the right experience and background to do so is a due selection process that puts an end once and for all to the gentlemen’s agreement between the US and Europe, and prioritises the nomination of a person who comes from the Global South and represents the interests of these countries. A process that necessarily incorporates exchanges with global civil society and sets clear selection criteria, such as a commitment to human rights law and to a feminist, green and just transition that ensures economic transformation in the Global South.

We look forward to progressive candidates from the Global South with the qualifications and lived experience to enable them to lead the World Bank during these challenging times.


Read the letter in Arabic | French | Spanish.

Add your organisation’s signature here. 

The US nominates its candidate… that was fast!

Ajay S. Banga, Former President and Chief Executive Officer of Mastercard, US’s nominee to the presidency of the World Bank. Credit: World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell

Ironies never cease. As the World Bank shareholders begin the process of reviewing the institution’s ability to effectively respond to the multiple crises impacting the globe and to address calls for urgent reform by discussing its ‘evolution roadmap’, it seems efforts to ensure the gentleman’s agreement, born in the age of empire, in which the US and European split leadership of the World Bank and IMF respectively are in rude health.

Following the unexpected resignation of its current President David Malpass and coinciding with the opening of the ‘process’ for the selection of his replacement, the US administration today announced the nomination of former MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga as the US candidate – and thus, likely its next president. The announcement was preceded by a statement from US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that the US would ‘quickly’ nominate its candidate, leaving one with the distinct impression that Malpass’s surprise resignation may not have surprised everyone.

Given the urgent need for reform in the global financial architecture to address the pressing challenges faced by the planet, women, the poor and marginalised populations, the nomination of someone so closely aligned with international finance and who has championed public-private partnerships as a solution to pressing environmental, social and human rights issues leaves little room for hope in the ‘evolution’ of the Bank. Mr. Banga’s background makes him rather unlikely to ensure the World Bank takes the opportunity of discussions about the roadmap to critically assess the effectiveness of the Bank’s private and finance-led approach to date and thus lead in a truly developmental direction.

The nomination of someone whose background indicates he would be committed to the failed ‘billions to trillions’ agenda and public-private partnerships, with their extremely poor track record, by the Bank’s principal shareholder and strong proponent of the gentleman’s agreement underscores the need for an end of the archaic and counter-productive ‘agreement’.

Indeed, the nomination makes clear the need for what civil society and low- and middle-income countries have long demanded, a merit-based, transparent selection process that necessarily incorporates exchanges with global civil society so that the World Bank president is selected in accordance with clear selection criteria, such as a commitment to human rights law and to a feminist, green and just transition that ensures economic transformation in middle- and low-income countries so that these can escape their long-standing path dependency.

We look forward to progressive candidates from the Global South with the qualifications and lived experience to enable them to lead the World Bank during these challenging times and to ensure it is truly ‘fit for purpose’.

If after decades you don’t succeed…

Dear readers and contributors,

Despite the professed commitment of the World Bank’s executive directors and our best efforts to ensure an open, transparent and merit-based process for the selection of the World Bank president, the multilateral institution is once again led by a US national. This follows the highly illegitimate process that saw the US candidate run unopposed, keeping the 75-year-old ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ firmly intact.

This was a “race” steeped in geopolitics with little incentive for Southern (or other) candidates to put their name forward to compete with the US nominee.

 World Bank Group President David Malpass and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde at Spring Meetings 2019
Photo: World Bank / Simone D. McCourtie

While we will say farewell for now, we hope to count on your continued support in holding Mr. Malpass and the World Bank generally accountable for their actions (or omissions).

As you also know, whatever the challenges and geopolitical realities, we strongly believe that the World Bank and IMF must change their leadership selection processes so that both institutions have leaders with the required skills and experience, selected through an open, fair and transparent process.

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World Bank president selection: ‘Gentleman’s agreement’ alive and well

After the unexpected resignation of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in January, the selection of his successor was subject to considerable scrutiny. Over 150 civil society organisations, academics and other individuals calledon the Board to live up to its commitment following Kim’s departure to an open, transparent and merit-based process. The call was echoed by the demands outlined in a January letter by the Bank’s own staff association. These demands are not new and resonate with long-standing calls to end the so-called ‘gentleman’s agreement’, which ensures that the IMF managing director is a European and the World Bank president a US national. They also reflect the calls made as far back as 2012, not by civil society activists or ‘disgruntled’ governments from the Global South, but by senior Bank staff. Former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Senior Vice-Presidents François Bourguignon and Nicholas Stern argued in a 2012 Financial Times article that the process is “not only hypocritical, it also destroys the trust and spirit of collaboration needed to manage the profound problems facing the world.”

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