One week after Agustín Carstens resigned as the IMF deputy managing director, managing director Rodrigo de Rato selected the deputy finance minister of Brazil, Murilo Portugal, to succeed him. Portugal’s appointment, revealed 23 October, brings him back to Washington where he served four years as an executive director at the World Bank and seven years as an ED at the Fund. Though currently sitting in leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s cabinet, Portugal was also secretary of the treasury during the centrist presidency of Fernando Cardoso and has served on the board of Banco do Brasil. He has degrees in law and economics, including from Cambridge University. Carstens has joined the transition team of Mexico’s newly elected president Felipe Calderon, and is tipped to be selected as finance minister
Kristalina Georgieva will serve as director for strategy and operations in the Bank’s sustainable development vice-presidency. The position was created in June by Bank president Paul Wolfowitz following the merger of the environmentally and socially sustainable development and the infrastructure networks. Georgieva is currently the World Bank’s country director for Russia.
