The World Bank Group has handed control of its finances to David Vaillant, a French banker who spent two decades at BNP Paribas, as the lender seeks to stretch its balance sheet further and draw more private money into development. Group President Ajay Banga announced Vaillant’s appointment as Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer on October 8. A World Bank spokesperson said he would assume office early in November, succeeding Anshula Kant, who is retiring after holding the post since 2019.
According to the bank, Vaillant will oversee financial management, treasury operations and risk management across a balance sheet deployed in more than 100 developing countries. He will also lead bond issuance for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The three institutions raised close to $82bn from international capital markets in the 2026 financial year.
Those figures show how heavily the bank’s lending now depends on investors. The World Bank’s annual report shows that IBRD raised nearly $50bn through medium and long term bonds in fiscal 2026, while IDA issued about $13.9bn equivalent across six currencies, with IFC accounting for the balance. On the lending side, new IBRD commitments reached $50.2bn for 147 operations, while IDA committed $30.8bn for 237 operations.
Banga described Vaillant’s background as “the ideal combination of experience needed to run the World Bank Group’s finance function”, pointing to his work with investors, governments and central banks. The bank said the new CFO would also drive its private capital mobilisation agenda. This includes developing new financing vehicles and instruments designed to attract private investors at scale.
Vaillant most recently served as Global Head of Finance, Strategy and Participations at BNP Paribas Asset Management. In that role, he led the €5.1bn acquisition of AXA Investment Managers, a deal that created one of Europe’s largest asset managers with €1.6tn in client assets. He earlier headed banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at BNP Paribas Corporate and Institutional Banking, where he also ran the sovereign advisory practice for governments and central banks.
Before joining BNP Paribas, Vaillant worked at the Banque de France, having started his career as a lawyer on cross-border transactions. He has served on the boards of financial institutions in Asia and Latin America, as well as fintech companies. He has also taught finance, sustainable finance and international macroeconomics at HEC School of Management and Sciences Po Paris.
Vaillant said he was honoured to serve the bank’s mission of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. “The World Bank Group sits at a junction very few institutions occupy,” he said. He added that the institution could bring governments, investors and development partners together while keeping the risk discipline that underpins its standing in capital markets.
The appointment comes at a politically delicate moment for the institution. In June, the bank dropped its target of committing 45 per cent of annual financing to projects with climate benefits, after the administration of US President Donald Trump pressed for its removal. Vaillant also inherits reforms from Kant’s tenure, during which, according to the bank, her team expanded lending capacity by tens of billions of dollars while protecting its triple A credit rating.
For Nigeria, the direction of the bank’s finances carries real weight. IDA’s financial statements show Nigeria as its third largest borrower, behind Bangladesh and Pakistan, with an exposure of $18.5bn as of March 31, 2026. That figure represents about eight per cent of IDA’s $230.8bn loan portfolio and is 6.9 per cent higher than the $17.3bn recorded a year earlier. Nigeria is also the largest IDA borrower in Africa, ahead of Ethiopia at $14.4bn, Tanzania at $14.3bn and Kenya at $13.2bn.
World Bank loan approvals for Nigeria between June 2023 and May 2026 stood at about $9.35bn, with a further $1.25bn package under discussion at the time. Because IDA now raises part of its resources from bond markets alongside donor contributions, the cost and volume of that borrowing affect how much concessional finance is available to countries such as Nigeria. Vaillant is expected to take charge of that portfolio from November.