In late February, the IMF appointed Nemat ‘Minouche’ Shafik as the third deputy managing director. She replaced Brazilian Murilo Portugal, who resigned in mid January to become the president of the Brazilian Banking Federation. Shafik, who was born in Egypt, holds three passports – US, UK and Egypt – and most recently served as the highest level civil servant in the British Department for International Development. Despite promises by the IMF’s main policy setting committee of finance ministers in 2009 to have an “open, merit-based and transparent process for the selection of IMF management” (see Update 75), Shafik was selected by IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn without any such process having taken place, as was the second deputy managing director Naoyuki Shinohara in late 2009 (see Update 68). Holding a doctorate in economics from Oxford University, Shafik also worked for 14 years at the World Bank. At the beginning of her career she served on the writing team for the 1991 World Development Report on development and the environment. By the end of her career at the Bank she had become vice president in charge of private sector development and infrastructure projects.