Joe Biden nominates former Mastercard boss Ajay Banga to lead World Bank

theguardian.com:

Joe Biden has nominated a former boss of Mastercard with decades of experience on Wall Street to lead the World Bank and oversee a shake-up at the development organisation to shift its focus to the climate crisis. The US president’s choice of Ajay Banga, an American citizen born in India, comes a week after David Malpass, a Donald Trump appointee, quit the role.

The World Bank’s governing body is expected to make a decision in May, but the US is the Washington-based organisation’s largest shareholder and has traditionally been allowed to nominate without challenge its preferred candidate for the post.

Malpass, who is due to step down on 30 June, was nominated by Trump in February 2019 and took up the post officially that April. He is known to have lost the confidence of Biden’s head of the US Treasury, Janet Yellen, who with other shareholders wanted to expand the bank’s development remit to include the climate crisis and other global challenges.

Malpass upset the Biden administration when he appeared to question the extent to which humans had contributed to global heating.

Biden said he wanted Banga to use his decades of experience on Wall Street to support private-sector lending to countries in the developing world.

“Ajay is uniquely equipped to lead the World Bank at this critical moment in history. He has spent more than three decades building and managing successful, global companies that create jobs and bring investment to developing economies, and guiding organisations through periods of fundamental change,” the president said.

“He has a proven track record managing people and systems, and partnering with global leaders around the world to deliver results,” he added.

Anti-poverty groups are expected to question Banga’s