Agustin Carstens, a 44-year-old former central banker with a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, and former Deputy Finance Minister of Mexico, will join Anne Krueger and Shigemitsu Sugisaki as IMF Deputy Managing Director. Carstens was quoted by the Financial Times as happily describing himself as “a genuine Chicago boy in every sense of the word”. He succeeds Chilean Eduardo Aninat after his resignation.

Horst Koehler has also announced the appointment as Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, of the University of Chicago Professor Raghuram Rajan, 40. Rajan is an Indian national. He will succeed Kenneth Rogoff, who had earlier announced his decision to return to Harvard in the Fall of 2003 after only two years at the Fund.

Another IMF employee is likely to be departing soon, possibly without a leaving present. Peru’s former economy minister and tax chief, Jorge Baca, arrested on Peruvian charges of corruption while serving in Argentina on an IMF team (see Update 33), faces an extradition trial in August, Argentine newspaper El Cronista said. Baca, who served under former President Alberto Fujimori, faces up to 10 years in prison.