First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton Leaving IMF

IMF News, February 7, 2020

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Press Release No. 20/36
Date: February 7, 2020
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced that David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD), will be leaving the Fund at the end of February in the context of changes to the leadership team.
Mr. Lipton became FDMD in September 2011 and is described as the IMF’s longest-serving FDMD.

Wide-ranging portfolio: strategy, policy development, multilateral and country surveillance, and lending programs.
Major initiatives led:
- The Fund’s Early Warning Exercise—held twice a year at the Spring and Annual Meetings to highlight present and future challenges faced by policymakers.
- The External Balance Assessment Framework and the related External Sector Report, which assess countries’ external positions and exchange rates.
- New work on the integrated policy framework, which considers how policy tools work best jointly and aims at strengthening Fund surveillance and traction.

Kristalina Georgieva lauded Mr. Lipton for his “intellectual leadership and innovative insights” and said that he commands “wide respect across the IMF’s 189 member countries” as well as among IMF staff.
Georgieva: “In his position as FDMD for the past nine years—indeed he is the IMF’s longest-serving FDMD—David has provided an invaluable service to the Fund’s membership and the global economy more broadly with his outstanding economic experience and expertise. The list of his achievements at the Fund is long. Put simply, David’s efforts to further enhance the rigor of the Fund’s analytical work and his ability to bring a policymaker’s perspective to the table are unsurpassed. I thank him for all that he has done for the Fund and the people we serve.”
Mr. Lipton: “Kristalina and I worked closely together while she was at the World Bank and I was pleased, while serving as Acting MD, and in the months since, to help facilitate her successful transition to the Fund. I believe in the work of the Fund. It has been an honor to work here, first for eight years at the start of my professional career in 1981 and then as FDMD since 2011. The Fund is an institution providing invaluable service to its members and the global economy writ large, and I am pleased to have served it for so long.”

Began career as a young economist at the IMF and worked for eight years on economic stabilization issues in emerging market and poor countries.
1989 to 1992: Teamed with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs as economic advisers to the governments of Russia, Poland and Slovenia during their transitions to capitalism.
1993 to 1998: Served at the U.S. Treasury Department; as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs—and before that as Assistant Secretary—helped lead the Treasury’s response to the financial crisis in Asia and the effort to modernize the international financial architecture.
Spent five years at Moore Capital Management.
Served as a Managing Director at Citi, Head of Global Country Risk Management.
Before returning to the IMF in 2011, was Special Assistant to the U.S. President and served as Senior Director for International Economic Affairs at the National Economic Council and National Security Council at the White House.
Also held positions at the Woodrow Wilson Center of Scholars and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nationality: U.S. national.

The search for Mr. Lipton’s successor will start shortly.
Media relations contact listed: Phone: +1 202 623-7100; Email: MEDIA@IMF.org; @IMFSpokesperson

Press Release No. 20/36, February 7, 2020