FORMER Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga is set to become the next president of the World Bank.
US President Joe Biden nominated Banga, a 63-year-old finance and development expert with American citizenship who was born in India, for the position. No other country proposed any alternative candidate till the closing date.
He will succeed outgoing president David Malpass, who made his resignation plans public in February of this year.
Banga is the first Indian candidate to be the president of the World Bank. Ajay Banga is the only person now qualified to run the World Bank, according to Joe Biden, who voiced confidence in his ability to govern. His experience in combining public and private resources to address the most pressing issues was also mentioned by Biden.
Banga just returned from a three-week international trip during which he met with representatives of civil society organisations, government officials, and other stakeholders in both donor and borrowing nations as part of his campaign for the top job at the bank.
He has gained the support of enough foreign governments, including India, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea, to all but guarantee his confirmation as president of the World Bank.
The US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, anticipated that Ajay Banga will be chosen to lead the World Bank, a multilateral development bank, on Wednesday (29).
In prepared testimony for the House Appropriations Committee’s State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs subcommittee, Yellen stated that Banga’s role would be to modernise the organisation to better address new issues.
Yellen will explain to the senators in charge of monitoring the Treasury Department’s budget how this change would help the Bank accomplish its key development and poverty reduction goals.
Ajaypal Singh Banga is currently serving as the Vice Chairman at General Atlantic which is an American growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for global growth companies, headquartered in New York, U.S..
The son of an Indian Army officer Harbhajan Singh Banga, Ajay Banga was born in the Pune cantonment of Khadki and spent his early years moving around the country. He completed his undergraduate studies at Delhi University and his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
He previously served 11 years as Mastercard’s president and CEO. He began his career at Nestle SA, where he spent over ten years in management, sales, and marketing positions.
Banga left Nestle SA to work for PepsiCo Inc., where he assisted in the establishment of the company’s fast-food franchise in India. He began working for Citigroup in 1996, and four years after arriving, he was promoted to business head of CitiFinancial and the US consumer-assets division. In 2005, he was chosen to oversee all the bank’s global consumer operations.
Banga was appointed to lead Citigroup’s Asia-Pacific division in 2008. In 2009, he left his position to become president and COO of Mastercard. In less than a year, Mastercard promoted Banga to CEO.
The Indian government awarded Ajay Banga the Padma Shri in 2016 for his contributions to trade and industry. In 2012, he also received the Foreign Policy Association Medal. He received the Ellis Island Medal of Honour and the Business Council for International Understanding’s Global Leadership Award in 2019 and the Distinguished Friends of Singapore Public Service Star in 2021.
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