International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced that David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD), would be leaving his position by the month end in the context of changes she will be making to the fund’s leadership.
Lipton is the IMF’s longest-serving FDMD, a position he took up in September 2011, according to the IMF, noting that the search for Lipton’s successor will start shortly.
Lipton’s wide-ranging portfolio at the IMF covered strategy, policy development, multilateral and country surveillance, as well as lending programmes.
Lipton, a US national, began his career as a young economist at the IMF, and worked for eight years on economic stabilisation issues in emerging market and poor countries. From 1989 to 1992, he teamed up with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard University, working as economic adviser to the governments of Russia, Poland, and Slovenia during their transitions to capitalism
He served at the US Treasury Department from 1993 to 1998. As Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, and before that as Assistant Secretary, he helped lead the Treasury’s response to the financial crisis in Asia and the effort to modernise the international financial architecture.
Lipton spent five years at Moore Capital Management and was a managing director at Citi, where he was head of global country risk management. Before returning to the IMF in 2011, he was Special Assistant to the US president, and served as senior director for international economic affairs at the National Economic Council and National Security Council at the White House. He also held positions at the Woodrow Wilson Centre of Scholars and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
