Dimon Meets Development Bank Leaders Seeking Private Funding Achi-News

Dimon and the executives, including US International Development Finance Corp. head Scott Nathan, discussed how to redirect private capital towards countries or issues often overlooked by investors and the need for more projects of quality that focuses on development to invest in.

They met at a closed-door dinner hosted by JPMorgan on Thursday on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington.

The World Bank and other development lenders are struggling to remain relevant as the needs of poorer countries far outstrip their capabilities, particularly for capital-intensive climate-related projects.

That has left them calling on the private sector to pour in more investment and on governments to raise more capital, with both methods so far yielding unfailing results.

The boost also comes as the US and its partners seek to offer an alternative to development funding from China, now the biggest official creditor to emerging markets.

Read More: Biden’s bid for World Bank Funds to Compete with China’s Stalls

Topics discussed by Dimon and the lenders included risk sharing and increasing access to private debt markets through bond issuance, options that have been pushed by development banks to help support emerging economies across the world

Rémy Rioux, head of the French Development Agency, said the meeting was the result of years of work trying to attract private investment, adding that it was the first time he could recall a bank executive as high-profile as Dimon attending a gathering of the kind over. the last two decades.

“That was the first time we got to Jamie Dimon,” Rioux said in an interview. “He was curious and tried to understand” each bank and their objectives, he said.

Dimon has placed JPMorgan at the heart of the financial world’s responses to some of the most pressing geopolitical issues of late. In January, he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Davos as the leader aimed to boost support for the war against Russia and plans to rebuild his country.

JPMorgan counts development banks and international organizations – including the IMF and the World Bank – among some of its most influential clients. In 2020, he launched the Development Finance Institute, which was billed as a way to expand private finance for sustainable development deals in emerging markets.

JPMorgan declined to comment.

“People are starting to see this huge architecture of public financial institutions,” Rioux said, adding that he had also spoken to Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street institutions. “We are ready to welcome and answer this kind of interest.”

Rioux is also the chairman of the Finance in Commons Summit, a gathering of more than 500 multilateral, national and sub-national organizations with $23 trillion in assets. The group plans to deepen coordination and integration at a summit later this year, which will be hosted by the Beijing Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The World Bank said on Sunday in a statement that Hiroshi Matano, head of its multilateral investment guarantee agency, and Makhtar Diop, managing director of its International Finance Corp arm, which lends to the private sector, were present at the meeting. He said the meeting was an opportunity to engage on key trends in the global economy, as well as areas for collaboration between the development finance community and the private sector.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Published: 21 April 2024, 11:48 PM IST