Member Views

Mapping China’s Participation in Multilateral Development Institutions and Funds

China has emerged as a leading participant in multilateral development organizations. In many ways, this is a welcome development. Today’s global challenges, including COVID-19 and climate change, require an international response and have prompted renewed calls for increased multilateral engagement by the major economy countries. This, combined with the recognition of multilateral institutions’ high standards for transparency and environmental safeguards, have led the United States at times to encourage China to step up its multilateral contributions. At the same time, countervailing voices focused on strategic competition increasingly view China’s multilateral participation with skepticism.

Mapping the Multilateral Concessional Finance Landscape

On September 19, the Center for Global Development will convene representatives from the leading multilateral development funds, their donors and recipients, and independent experts to discuss the next round of negotiations that will determine how much money these funds will have available in the years ahead and how they will spend it.

Mark Bergman

This week we would like to welcome new member Mark Bergman, president of 7Pillars Global Insights.

Mark stepped down in July 2021 as a partner of the international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Now through 7Pillars Global Insights, he comments and briefs on a range of current political, geopolitical, and regulatory topics, including mitigating the effects of climate change and combatting disinformation, extremism, and weaponization of hate.

Mark R. Evans

BWC would like to welcome new member Mark Evans, ANZ Country Head Singapore and Head of South East Asia, India & Middle East.

Mark was appointed Country Head, Singapore in May 2022 with additional responsibility for South East Asia economies, including Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines and UAE. As Country Head, Singapore, Mark is responsible for the overall business of ANZ Singapore across the Institutional, Corporate and Markets segments, and for driving connectivity between Singapore, ANZ's home markets of Australia and New Zealand and our international network.

Markets are Too Complacent About Coronavirus Despite Sell-off

Investors are deluding themselves about how severe the coronavirus outbreak will be. Despite this week’s big sell-off in equity markets, the worst is yet to come. Until this week, the market reaction to the virus had been mild — after a dip in late January, US and global equities rallied to new highs. This complacency was based on a number of flawed assumptions.

Markets face investment shakeup

In the first half of the year, emerging market debt and equity asset classes were up in benchmark indices.

Master's Award for Professional Excellence

BWC member Jonathan Everhart was recently selected for the Brown University School of Professional Studies Master's Award for Professional Excellence for his significant accomplishments in the fields of finance, the digital economy, and ESG.

Bretton Woods Committee congratulates Jonathan on his selection for this award!

May FOMC Meeting Could Be a Relatively Quiet Affair

"Jerome Powell may be able to approach the meeting without the usual degree of media maelstrom and market apprehension", writes BWC member Mark Sobel. "Enjoy it while it lasts," he says, though, especially as the looming debt ceiling date approaches.

Maybank Singapore

BWC welcomes our new organizational member Maybank Singapore. Singapore is one of Maybank's largest overseas operations. It's staffed by over 2,000 employees. They offer retail, private wealth, and small and medium-sized enterprise banking services; and their Singapore branch operates the Global Banking business to cater to the banking needs of corporate and institutional clients.

Their engagement with the Committee will be led by Chandran Dharmarajan, Head of Brand and Communications. We appreciate their support for our mission, and we look forward to their engagement!

MDBs Loans: a New Asset Class Collateralized Loan Obligations

Multilateral Development Bank balance sheet management with structured financings is still in its infancy but a number of path-breaking deals show the way. Two are by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and one by  International Finance Corporation (IFC) though there have also been some others. These  MDB transactions involve about $13 billion in public and private sector MDB loans. The two from the African Development Bank are both synthetic.