Ajay Banga
The Catalyst
Ideas with a spark, energy, range and the ability to start things.
Ajay Banga arrived at the World Bank in 2023 with explicit instructions to reinvent it, and he did, which is why he reads so cleanly as The Catalyst. He widened the institution's mandate beyond poverty reduction to include climate and global resilience, mobilised private capital at unprecedented scale, and generated urgency around reforms that had stalled for decades.
“Money comes from donor countries That's where it starts from. That's what they call the capital of the bank. And then the retained earnings of the bank over the years adds to that capital. And then we leverage that up through bonds, bonds like the ones that Norway and your institution buy.”
“I do. I believe that not only for the purpose of employees feeling that they have skin in the game and they own a part of what this institution is doing, but also I think for them to feel the pain and the pleasure of the company's performance.”
“And I had told the board that I would give them 10 years. And then comes the World Bank. And I threw up all that. Jump off the deep end into a public sector kind of institution. With its own fairly interesting challenges to work on. I mean, if you don't call that risk-taking, and during this period, I've moved 10, 12 times.”
“That's bridges and tunnels and ports and roads and digital, and the fifth one, which is digital infrastructure, but also the use of digital to help in governance as well as consumers and businesses.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Ajay Banga”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE