Business

Former PepsiCo CEO being considered for World Bank chief post: report

by John Bowden

Former PepsiCo. CEO Indra Nooyi is reportedly being considered by the White House to become the U.S. nominee to lead the World Bank. 

The New York Times, citing several people familiar with the process, reported that Nooyi is being floated as a potential successor to Jim Yong Kim by White House adviser Ivanka Trump, who has been an admirer of the longtime executive.

Kim, the World Bank’s current president, has said he will step down from his role to join a private firm. His resignation goes into effect next month.

The White House declined to comment on the Times’s report.

{mosads}Ivanka Trump previously offered praise for Nooyi last August when she stepped down from her role as CEO at PepsiCo after a dozen years on the job, and according to the Times has worked to make Nooyi a top ally of the Trump administration in the business community.

“Indra, you are a mentor + inspiration to so many, myself included. I am deeply grateful for your friendship,” Trump wrote following Nooyi’s resignation last year.

Nooyi has attended the president’s meetings with business leaders at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club, acccording to the Times, and served on Trump’s now-disbanded council of business leaders.

Despite her proximity to the Trump White House, Nooyi supported Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election and said at a New York Times conference that same year that her employees were in “mourning” after the former secretary of State lost the presidential election to Trump.

“They were all in mourning,” Nooyi told a Times journalist at the DealBook conference in 2016.

 “Our employees are all crying. And the question that they’re asking, especially those who are not white: ‘Are we safe?’ Women are asking: ‘Are we safe?’ LGBT people are asking: ‘Are we safe?’ I never thought I’d have had to answer those questions.”
 
Nooyi is reportedly one of several candidates being considered for the role, in a search which is being overseen by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.