IFC: Wolfensohn shuffles the deck

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IFC: Wolfensohn shuffles the deck

The IFC and World Bank have spent much of the last two decades at each other's throats. The appointment of Peter Woicke as head of the IFC and a managing director at the Bank should change that. It should also help increase emphasis on private-sector funding. James Smalhout reports.

IFC: Woicke sweeps in a new era


World Bank president James Wolfensohn has been battling to bring his organization up to date. Most recently and significantly, on January 1 Peter Woicke, an investment banker from JP Morgan, took the helm at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank affiliate responsible for direct lending to private companies in developing countries.

Woicke, in an unprecedented move, was almost immediately appointed as a managing director of the World Bank Group with responsibility for guiding its private-sector work. Nemat Shafik, the World Bank's new vice-president for infrastructure and private-sector development, will report to him.

Sources close to the Bank say that Wolfensohn was responding to complaints from outside. Critics said the World Bank Group - five legally separate entities - wasn't acting like a unified organization.

Ibrahim Shihata, the Bank's former general counsel, told Euromoney  that Wolfensohn had never liked the idea of a separation between the institutions and wanted them to act as a group with the same ultimate purpose. Wolfensohn serves as president of the whole group and the separate boards have practically the same membership - representatives of member governments.


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