Kristalina Georgieva named IMF managing director

Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva has been selected as the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

Ms Georgieva, who was previously chief executive of the World Bank, becomes the first person from an emerging economy to lead the IMF.

Ms Georgieva has been appointed for a five-year term, starting on 1 October.

She will succeed Christine Lagarde, who is leaving to become head of the of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Ms Georgieva was the only nominee for the job.

The 66-year-old economist, the daughter of a civil engineer, studied political economy and sociology at the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics in Sofia while Bulgaria was still under communist rule.

After graduating in 1976, she got her first taste of capitalism in the UK, as a British Council scholar at the London School of Economics.

Speaking after her selection by the IMF’s executive board, she described herself as “a firm believer in its mandate to help ensure the stability of the global economic and financial system through international co-operation”.