Helming the affairs of world’s most powerful development bank, an Indian American who knows exactly what developing countries needs.
Our Bureau
Washington DC
Ajaypal Singh Banga, popularly known as Ajay Banga has been selected by the Executive Directors of the World Bank, as 14th President of the World Bank for 5 years term beginning June 2, 2023. This comes at a time when the world is grappling with twin challenges of poverty driven migrations and climate change. Ajay was born and brought up in an Indian Sikh family with Army background. He is the younger brother of M S Banga of Hindustan Unilever fame.
Ajay has followed a path of educational excellence, with schooling from St. Edward’s School in Shimla and Hyderabad Public School. He is a proud alumnus of St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. In 2007, Ajay Banga was naturalized a US citizen.
Ajay has risen from ranks and boost an illustrious career. He started as Management Trainee with Nestle in 1981 and went on to work in Sales, Marketing and General Management with PepsiCo to launch Pizza Hut and KFC in India as the country was liberalized.
Ajay joined Citigroup in 1996 and went on to head Citi’s international global consumer group, covering credit card and consumer banking business outside of North America. He was instrumental in reorganization of Citigroup’s Asian operations.
Thereon, Ajay headed Mastercard since 2010 and increased its revenue and market capitalization to more than US $ 300 billion within a decade. Most recently, Ajay served as Vice Chairman at General Atlantic, having served as Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce prior to that.
