Happy birthday, Luis Alberto Moreno! On May 3, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank turns 59.
Moreno will be celebrating in Manila, where he is attending the 45th Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank — the first time an IDB chief has attended the ADB gathering. It’s a sign of greater collaboration between the two multilateral banks: Earlier this year, Haruhiko Kuroda became the first ADB chief to attend the annual IDB meeting, which took place in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Moreno took office in 2005 and was reelected two years ago after an uncontested run. Among the latest major initiatives launched under his watch is MapAmericas, an online mapping tool that makes data from IDB and other sources easily accessible to the public. Moreno has presided over the bank’s largest capital increase in history, $70 billion, raising IDB’s capital to $171 billion. The increase will allow the bank to approve roughly $12 billion in financing annually between 2012 and 2021.
Moreno is not the only multilateral development bank president turning 59 this year. Outgoing World Bank President Robert Zoellick will turn a year shy of 60 on July 25. Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, turned 59 on Jan. 6.
Mirow is currently running for a second four-year term at EBRD. Unlike Moreno, Mirow is competing with four heavyweights for the job — a first in EBRD’s history. France and Germany usually choose the next president with broad support of other EU members.
Challenging Mirow are Philippe de Fontaine Vive Curtaz, vice president of the European Investment Bank and France’s candidate for the position; Bozidar Djelic, former Serbian deputy prime minister; Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, former prime minister of Poland; and Suma Chakrabarti, permanent secretary at the U.K. Ministry of Justice Departmental Board.
Chakrabarti, however, seems unlikely to get the job due to an unwritten rule banning U.K. candidates from the EBRD post because the bank is already headquartered in London.
Mirow’s leadership over the past few years may well get him reelected when the EBRD board of governors meets May 18-19. IHS Global Insight Economist Ralf Weigart told Agence France Presse in April Mirow has done a “decent job” steering the bank during the global financial crisis. And Neil Buckley of the Financial Times said Mirow remains a “favorite” among several western and eastern European countries, including Russia.
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About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
