Meet the favourite to be the new IMF boss
SHE’S not an economist, she’s not a politician and she blames the lack of women in the world of finance for the severity of the crisis.
But she is the favourite to be the new boss of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Christine Lagarde’s motto may be to “grit your teeth and smile”, but it has shot her to the top of a man’s world.
She was named the EU’s most competent finance minister by the Financial Times while Forbes placed her among the world’s 50 most influential women.
Her smile has also made the former synchronised swimming champion the darling of the (mainly) boys club of EU finance ministers. “She charms their socks off — they love it,” says one insider.
The 55-year-old is France’s longest serving finance minister in the past half-century — the republic had 10 ministers in just 12 years. Rumours that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was jealous of her popularity and intended to ditch her have proved false.
Instead she has survived by learning to steer the narrow line between doing his bidding and persuading him to drop or change some of his more controversial plans.
Her negotiating ability, political astuteness, directness and ability to represent a French version of the Anglo-Saxon model means she is listened to by her EU colleagues — and now also those on the world stage, as France chairs the G8.
She got the Germans to drop their objections to a reduced VAT rate in French restaurants, persuaded French bankers — one by one — to give up their bonuses, softened up the French 35-hour working week and, while holding Mr Sarkozy’s line on Ireland’s interest rate cut, nevertheless agreed the issue should be moved into the calmer finance ministers’ arena.
Tall, slender and with glowing white hair, Ms Lagarde was plucked by Mr Sarkozy to become his foreign trade minister in 2005 without ever having to win a vote in an election. For a whole month she became his agriculture minister. She was tipped to be justice minister, but instead the president gave her economy in 2007 — the first female finance minister of a G8 country — and she has never looked back.
Analysts fear that one single favour she did for the president could be her Achilles heel in becoming the latest French president of the IMF — a post they have held for 26 of the last three decades.
But there are potential skeletons lying in her closet. A court will rule on June 10 whether to investigate her over a disputed €240 million arbitration settlement with businessman Bernard Tapie, a convicted ex-minister who backed Mr Sarkozy.
The daughter of Parisian academics, Ms Lagarde’s father died when she was 17. She spent a year in the US perfecting her English, studied law in Paris and, at the age of 25, joined the largest law firm in the US, Baker & McKenzie in Paris where, for 18 years, she specialised in company law. She climbed the corporate ladder and was elected in 1999 by an overwhelming majority of the firm’s partners — 90% male — to become their first female chairman.
Asked for advice on running the law firm, she told the New York Times: “Grit your teeth, because it is a matter of resilience, stamina and energy. And never do what the boys do.”
Her job took her around the world and the contacts she has gathered on the way have stood her in good stead. She was able to phone then US treasury secretary Henry Paulson on the night the fate of AIG hung in the balance and told him not to let it go the same way as Lehman Brothers.
“I had just 15 seconds to persuade him,” she said.
The French have as poor a reputation for languages as the Irish, but they adore that Ms Lagarde is fluent enough not just to debate but to joke and use slang like a native.
Whether it’s on CNN in a fabulous French palace, in her ultra modern finance offices in Bercy, Paris, or on the set of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the glamorous lady can hold her own.
She is divorced from Eachran Gilmour, has two sons, Pierre-Henri, 25, and Thomas, 23, and lives in Paris. She likes to spend time in her other home in Normandy, where she tends to her roses and makes jam.
Ms Lagarde has the next 24 hours to convince the most powerful states on the planet that woman or not, French or not, she is the best person for the job. The timing could not be better — she will be among the G8 heads in Deauville where she is almost certain to get the support of US President Barack Obama.
The IMF executive committee will draw up a shortlist of three candidates on June 10 and take a vote on June 30.
Whether they choose to replace the disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn with another French person is not a foregone conclusion.
