IMF's First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton to step down

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton would be leaving the multilateral lender at the end of February, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced on Friday.

Lipton, who took up the position in September 2011, would step down in the context of changes he will be making to the leadership team, the IMF chief said in a statement.

As the IMF's longest-serving first deputy managing director, Lipton boasts "a wide-ranging portfolio" at the institution, covering strategy, policy development, multilateral and country surveillance, as well as lending programs, Georgieva said.

The IMF chief lauded Lipton for his "intellectual leadership and innovative insights" and said that he commands "wide respect across the IMF's 189 member countries" as well as among IMF staff.

Lipton said that "Kristalina and I worked closely together while she was at the World Bank and I was pleased, while serving as Acting MD (Managing Director), and in the months since, to help facilitate her successful transition to the Fund."

Georgieva, chief executive officer of the World Bank, began her five year-term as the IMF managing director on Oct. 1, following Christine Lagarde's resignation in July last year. Lipton served as acting managing director in the interim period.

Lipton, a U.S. national, began his career as a young economist at the IMF in 1981, and worked for eight years on economic stabilization issues in emerging market and poor countries. He served as under secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1993 to 1998.

"It has been an honor to work here," Lipton said. "The Fund is an institution providing invaluable service to its members and the global economy writ large, and I am pleased to have served it for so long."

The search for Lipton's successor will start shortly, the statement added.