Washington, D.C., May 7, 2009
—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has taken a historic step to maximize its ability to mobilize capital to address the effects of the global financial crisis and serve longer-term development needs, setting up a subsidiary that for the first time will serve as a fund manager of third-party capital.
The subsidiary, IFC Asset Management Company, LLC, announced today that it has appointed Gavin Wilson as its first chief executive officer. Wilson, a British national, is currently a Managing Director in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs in London, where he has worked for the last 13 years.
"This new initiative by IFC will play an important part in drawing private capital to help overcome poverty and build the foundations for growth during this global economic crisis,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. “This venture offers a new and promising avenue to connect investment capital with developing country opportunities, to provide better jobs and livelihoods, along with good returns.”
The launch of the subsidiary is a significant step for IFC, the largest multilateral financial institution investing in private enterprises in emerging markets, and follows an announcement last year by Zoellick of a “one percent solution” for sovereign funds, which called on them to invest one percent of their holdings in equity in sub-Saharan Africa.
IFC Asset Management Company will rely upon IFC’s global experience and local presence in nearly 90 countries to maximize its development impact. It will encourage investment in developing countries by allowing investors to benefit from IFC’s unique investment expertise and insights derived from more than 50 years of direct investing in emerging markets.
Lars Thunell, IFC Executive Vice President and CEO, said: “By pooling resources from other investors, IFC Asset Management Company will help bring long-term capital to the world’s poorest countries and regions while maintaining the highest standards for sustainable investing and driving even greater development impact. It will also help expand the scale and scope of IFC investment activities, while sharing risks and investment returns with other investors.”
The new asset-management platform, which is wholly owned by IFC, will manage the $3 billion IFC Recapitalization Fund, which is designed to protect systemically important emerging-markets banks from the effects of the global financial crisis. It will also manage a new $1 billion private equity fund that will allow national pension funds, sovereign funds, and other sovereign investors from IFC’s shareholder countries to co-invest in IFC transactions in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
At Goldman Sachs, Wilson is responsible for senior relationships with industrial, diversified, and sovereign fund clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has co-headed Goldman’s EMEA Industrials Group and was previously head of the firm's New Markets investment banking execution team, focused on the emerging markets of EMEA.
Wilson began his career at McKinsey and Company. He joined the World Bank Group in 1988, working in the Bank’s Africa Region and then for six years in IFC's Corporate Finance Services Department, where he was a Senior Investment Officer. He subsequently served as a Special Advisor at the Bank of England before joining Goldman Sachs. He has worked on assignments in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Wilson, aged 46, holds a BA from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Stanford University, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Wilson will represent the IFC Asset Management Company on the IFC Management Group. His appointment will be effective July 1, 2009.
About IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, creates opportunity for people to escape poverty and improve their lives. We foster sustainable economic growth in developing countries by supporting private sector development, mobilizing private capital, and providing advisory and risk mitigation services to businesses and governments. Our new investments totaled $16.2 billion in fiscal 2008, a 34 percent increase over the previous year. For more information, visit
www.ifc.org
.
