Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as the 10th leader of the International Monetary Fund, kicking off a contest for his successor as Europeans seek to retain the job amid a lack of unity among emerging-market nations.
“I want to devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence,” Strauss-Kahn said in a statement released by the Washington-based IMF four days after his arrest on sexual-assault charges. The fund said it will comment “in the near future” on the succession. Strauss-Kahn, 62, had been leading polls for France’s 2012 presidential election.
European officials, who have picked IMF heads for 65 years under a deal that also gives the US the lock on the top World Bank post, moved to retain the privilege, with Sweden backing French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde. Russia and South Africa have called for an emerging-market candidate, while some Asian policy makers suggested someone from their region.
“Time is of the essence,” said Julie Chon, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council and former adviser to the US Senate Banking Committee. “The longer the IMF allows the specter of uncertainty to hang over its leadership, the more exposed it becomes to the jittery actions of sovereign debt and foreign-exchange traders who have been speculating on what the leadership vacuum means for their portfolios.”
The Washington-based lender that approved a record $91.7 billion in emergency loans last year and provides a third of the euro-region’s bailout packages said John Lipsky, the Number 2 official at the fund, remains as acting leader, according to its statement late yesterday. Lipsky, a former chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co, is scheduled to retire in August. Strauss-Kahn’s five-year term had 17 months remaining. In past successions, incoming managing directors were appointed to fresh five-year tenures.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters today that Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis “speaks for a European candidate” and that a decision must be made swiftly. She declined to specify who she would prefer to get the job.
“I would argue that Christine Lagarde has outstanding credentials,” Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said today, further adding, her gender is also an “advantage” since “half of the world has not been represented as managing director.”
Lagarde, 55, declined to comment on her potential candidacy when questioned by reporters in Paris today. She said that any successor to Strauss-Kahn should come from Europe.
Nout Wellink, a European Central Bank Governing Council member, told the Dutch talk show Knevel & Van den Brink late last night: “I know a fantastic candidate, that’s Jean-Claude Trichet,” whose term as ECB president ends in October.
Japan, which has the second-biggest share of voting power at the IMF with 6.25 per cent, has yet to decide on its stance, Tetsuro Fukuyama, the government’s deputy chief cabinet secretary said.
