Lula Seeks to Delay Choice of Head for Key Latin American Bank

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is seeking to delay the election of a new head for the Inter-American Development Bank after the outgoing administration of Jair Bolsonaro put forward a candidate to helm the key Latin American lender.

Most Read from Bloomberg

• China Plans Property Rescue in Latest Surprise Policy Shift

• FTX Latest: Binance CEO Plans Recovery Fund, Laments Bad Actors

• Biden Meets Xi as Asia Allies Look to Lower Temperature

• Fall of the World’s Hottest Stock Cost Sea Founders $32 Billion

• FTX’s Freefall Into Bankruptcy Shows Why Case File Is Empty

“It would be good to postpone it,” Gleisi Hoffmann, the head of Lula’s Workers’ Party and a member of his transition team, told reporters in Brasilia on Friday. “We have an elected government, there’s no reason not to wait for the government to take office to be able to nominate someone.”

While Hoffmann said she wasn’t aware of any formal request to delay the process, people familiar with the matter said Lula’s transition team has reached out to IDB governors, mostly finance ministers of the 48 nations that are members of the bank, to suggest the postponement. The people asked not to be named without permission to speak publicly.

Nominations are currently set to close by the end of Friday in Washington, and the election is scheduled for Nov. 20. Lula takes office Jan. 1. Brazil and Argentina have the largest voting share at the Washington-based bank after the US.

Bolsonaro nominated Ilan Goldfajn, a former president of Brazil’s central bank and the current Western Hemisphere director at the International Monetary Fund. But Mexico, Chile, and Argentina are each planing their own candidacies, and international financial organizations such as the IDB try to operate on consensus as much as possible.

Joe Biden’s administration has said it has no plan to nominate a candidate, and that the person should come from Latin America. Some Democrats were deeply critical of Donald Trump’s decision to nominate his presidential adviser Mauricio Claver-Carone for the job in 2020, breaking a six-decade tradition of having a Latin American at the helm of the bank.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

• Americans Have $5 Trillion in Cash, Thanks to Federal Stimulus

• The Golden Era of AI Chess Makes Things Tricky for Players

• One of Gaming’s Most Hated Execs Is Jumping Into the Metaverse

• How Apple Stores Became Just Another Retail Job

• Meta Investors Are in No Mood for Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Moonshot

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.