Will Lagarde renew? IMF opens nominations for managing director

The IMF will Thursday open formal nominations for the next term of the managing director, with current chief Christine Lagarde the likely leading candidate, despite facing a possible trial in France.

The International Monetary Fund said nominations for the five-year term to run the global crisis bank beginning in July will close on February 10.

After a review of the candidates, the IMF executive board aims to have decided on a candidate by March 3.

Lagarde, the former French finance minister who has overseen the IMF through the challenging eurozone bailouts and is widely respected in the global financial community, has not said directly that she wants to renew her position.

But she said several times in the past year that she is open to it.

Asked about staying on at the annual IMF global meeting in Lima, Peru last October, she said: “I’m certainly open to the fact that it would not be my last annual meeting. But this is not for me to decide.”

Lagarde easily won a contest with several developing country candidates to take over the IMF in 2011 as Europe was sinking deep into economic crisis.

But her win came amid criticisms that the IMF’s top job should not be locked down by a European, as it has since the institution was created in 1944.

Lagarde’s renewal also faces a personal legal challenge: she could stand trial in France over her role in a banking scandal that predates her arrival at the IMF.

In December investigating judges placed her under formal investigation in the long-running affair of Bernard Tapie, who received a substantial state payout for his dispute with a state bank during her time as finance minister.

Lagarde has said she would fight the trial order, and the IMF executive board at the time reiterated its confidence in her.

On Wednesday the French press reported that Paris could support Ivory Coast-born French banker Tidjane Thiam as a replacement if she were not to run.

But Thiam told US TV channel CNBC that he would not speculate on taking the job and that he was focused on his position as chief executive at Credit Suisse.

He told CNBC that Lagarde had done “a phenomenal job” at the IMF.