“They spend a lot of money, they’re not very efficient,” Malpass told a congressional hearing in 2017, referring to multilateral organizations. “They’re often corrupt in their lending practices and they don’t get the benefit to the actual people in the countries.”
He told lawmakers in December that he hopes “we do change the global order, make it better and make it work better.”
Malpass would replace Jim Yong Kim, who abruptly resigned as head of the bank in January to become vice chairman of investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners.
Malpass held senior posts at the Treasury and the State departments under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He served as chief economist at Bear Stearns, an investment bank that collapsed during the global financial crisis.
The World Bank was conceived during World War II at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, that also spawned the International Monetary Fund. Its original purpose was to finance the reconstruction of Europe. But under Robert McNamara, who led the bank from 1968 to 1981, it shifted its focus toward financing development in the world’s poorest countries, a mission it maintains to this day.
The U.S. is the World Bank’s largest shareholder. Under an informal trans-Atlantic pact, an American has always run the institution, while the IMF leader has always been European.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.