From the Financial Times' Lunch with the FT-Christine Lagarde:
The IMF’s chief talks about giving more power to non-western countries, bringing more women into the room and the ‘highly political’ decision of a French court to investigate her
Christine Lagarde sits at a table in an Indian restaurant in the heart of Washington and smiles winningly at the waiter. She arrived barely a minute ago, precisely on time for our scheduled appointment, in a swirl of elegant cream: chic Chanel-style suit, matching shoes, silver filigree bracelet and shock of white hair.
But even before the waiter can wave a menu, she takes control. “Right, I know what I want! Spinach! Blackened cod! Quinoa! No sides! That’s all! Perfect!”I feel tempted to say, “Me too”; she exudes such brisk authority and confidence, it feels hard to resist following in her wake. But I don’t want to seem like a groupie: as fast as I can, I order her spinach dish and some random curried okra.“Oh, and water with bubbles, please!” Lagarde adds. She explains that she has chosen this restaurant for efficiency: it is next to her apartment in Washington and it is where she often orders take-out. “That’s all!” she tells the waiter. “Perfect! Thank you! Perfect!”Lagarde and I are here because she recently celebrated an anniversary: just over three years ago she took over as managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the first woman to run the mighty $760bn organisation that is charged with promoting global financial and monetary stability. She arrived, however, amid great instability. The IMF’s former managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had just resigned after becoming entangled in a sordid sex scandal in a New York hotel. “It was a very bizarre time,” Lagarde drolly observes, stressing her words. The world outside the IMF was also experiencing its own, financial, crisis.So what would an IMF-style “review” of her own performance say? She pulls a face and chuckles. “Like most IMF programmes, I would say that there has been lots of progress – but there is still a lot more to do!” In 2011 her first priority was to restore the battered morale of the IMF. Oddly enough, the task felt somewhat familiar. Born in 1956 into a middle-class family, Lagarde attended school in Le Havre, France, and studied in America and Europe before joining Baker & McKenzie, the world’s largest law firm, in 1981. In 1999 she became its first female chairman. “I was elected when the firm was a complete mess. I had to deal with that,” she says. “But women often end up in charge to sort things out when everything goes wrong. Just think of Iceland or Central Africa. Or look at Japan.”. . .The waiter silently presents our starter: bowls of spinach with Indian spices sprinkled on top. Wine is not even discussed. “I stopped drinking more than 15 years ago,” she explains. “I realised that I just couldn’t do it all – travel and work and drink.”She pokes her spinach and declares she has hit her first target: morale at the IMF is dramatically better. “That [scandal] is over! Nobody talks about it now.” But her next set of targets is far harder: the IMF’s own “corporate governance”, a euphemism for the bitter struggle that it faces in adapting to the modern world. Ever since its foundation in 1944, the fund – like the global economy – has been dominated by western nations. As part of that, Europeans, like Lagarde, have traditionally had the top job. “Although I think the fact that I was a woman helped to get this job,” she admits. “It would have been hard [after the scandal] to give it to another French man.”Lagarde knows this pattern is an anachronism in a world where the west is losing economic power. “The under-representation of countries such as China and other emerging markets is just not right. Not right!” she declares with passion. Thus she is backing reform plans to give more power to non-western countries. But the American Congress has failed to ratify these. “This is very frustrating,” she observes. “I spent a lot of time with members of Congress last year trying to show them how ridiculous it is to stand in the way of change. I will keep pushing and pushing on this – I will belly-dance if I have to, to get there.”In the meantime, she says, “I am trying to mitigate this by having Chinese officials in big IMF jobs.”...MORE
Next up, Henry Kissinger.
