People: IMF appoints strategy head

US: Ceyla Pazarbasioglu has been appointed as director of the International Monetary Fund’s strategy, policy and review department.

Pazarbasioglu is currently serving as a World Bank official, but has also spent more than 20 years working with the IMF. She is a Turkish citizen and has a PhD in economics from Georgetown University.

She will succeed Martin Mühleisen, who was appointed as special adviser to managing director Kristalina Georgieva in July. Both Pazarbasioglu and Mühleisen will take up their new roles on September 15, the August 25 statement says. Mühleisen has held the position since 2017 and is set to retire in 2021.

In her new job, Pazarbasioglu will lead the IMF’s engagement with the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the Development Committee, the G20 and the United Nations.  

Pazarbasioglu is currently the vice-president for equitable growth, finance and institutions at the World Bank. She has held this role since 2018, before which she was director of the organisation’s finance, competitiveness and innovation global practice. She has represented the World Bank as the G7 and G20 finance deputy, and is currently a member of the Financial Stability Board.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Pazarbasioglu had a 23-year career at the IMF, where she worked on a wide spectrum of policy issues. She completed financial sector assessment programmes (FSAP) and contributed to the fund’s global regulatory and financial stability reform agendas. She also worked on regional and country work in emerging Europe, the UK, Korea and Thailand.

“I am delighted that Ceyla will be rejoining the fund and strengthening our team. She is an intellectual leader with profound knowledge of how institutions such as the fund and bank operate and work together, significant experience on how to design policies to help people especially in emerging markets and low-income countries, and excellent people management skills,” Georgieva says.

Her experience at both the IMF and the World Bank makes her “ideally placed” to deepen co-ordination between the two institutions, the IMF says.

Pazarbasioglu has also worked for the Turkish government and has served as chief economist at ABN Amro Investment Bank in the UK.

Lithuania: Gediminas Šimkus has been appointed as a board member of the Bank of Lithuania by the country’s president Gitanas Nausėda.

Šimkus, who was director of economics and financial stability service at the central bank since 2014, was nominated by board chairman Vitas Vasiliauskas, the August 25 announcement says.

Šimkus fills a vacant seat on the five-person board, which also includes deputy chairs Asta Kuniyoshi and Raimondas Kuodis and board member Marius Jurgilas. He will serve a six-year term.

This is Nausėda’s first appointment to the board since being elected in June 2019. Nausėda himself was director of monetary policy at the central bank from 1996 to 2000.

Šimkus joined the Bank of Lithuania in 2002 as an economist, researching financial stability and stress testing, and working as an off-site supervisor. From 2010 to 2012, he was a financial stability economist working at the European Central Bank. He has undergraduate and Master’s degrees in economics from Vilnius University.

Šimkus returned to the Bank of Lithuania in 2012 as head of the newly established financial stability department. This department was assigned macro-prudential responsibilities by the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, in 2014.  

Šimkus was promoted to director of the department. Since his appointment, the financial stability department has established the National Resolution Authority to co-operate with the eurozone-based Single Resolution Board. It has also expanded its macroeconomic and financial research capacities, the central bank says.

US: Former Federal Reserve Bank of New York official Simon Potter has reportedly been recruited by hedge fund Millennium Management.

Potter, who was head of the New York Fed’s markets group from 2010 to 2019, will be vice-chairman, fixed income at Millennium Management, according to Bloomberg. The hedge fund’s website says it manages more than $45 billion in assets.

Prior to the appointment, Potter was a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.