Press Release No. 12/416

Press Release: IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde Names Alejandro Werner as Director of the Fund’s Western Hemisphere Department

November 6, 2012

Ms. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), named today Mr. Alejandro Werner to the position of Director, Western Hemisphere Department. His appointment will become effective early in January 2013. Mr. Werner succeeds Mr. Nicolas Eyzáguirre, who resigned effective July 26, 2012.

“Alejandro Werner has extensive public policy experience and a deep understanding of the global financial and economic system,” Ms. Lagarde stated. “My management team and I look forward very much to working with him, and expect he will make a significant contribution to our operations and activities in the region, and globally. The Western Hemisphere Department has front-line responsibility for economic surveillance of some of the world’s most systemically important economies. With his impressive wealth of experience, Alejandro will help the IMF to be even more effective in serving our member countries in that area.”

Mr. Werner, a Mexico national, has been head of corporate and investment banking at Mexico’s BBVA Bancomer since August 2011. Prior to that, he held a range of senior public policy positions, including serving as Mexico’s Undersecretary of Finance and Public Credit from December 2006 until August 2010. He also headed research at Mexico’s central bank prior to joining the finance ministry in 2003. Mr. Werner, who has held a range of academic positions in Mexico, Spain and the United States, also served as an economist in the IMF’s Research and Western Hemisphere Departments in 1995 and 1996.

Mr. Werner holds a Ph.D in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with a bachelor’s of science in economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.