In contrast to the long line of financiers who preceded him, the
World Bank's new president, Jim Yong Kim, is a medical doctor and
anthropologist. Kim comes to the Bank from Dartmouth College,
where he served as president.
Jim Yong Kim
His predecessor, Robert Zoellick, worked at Goldman Sachs Group
( GS
, quote ) before joining the World Bank. Lewis Preston,
who led the Bank from 1991 to 1995, worked at J.P. Morgan ( JPM ,
quote ).
Before ascending to Dartmouth's presidency, Kim held
professorships and chaired departments at Harvard Medical School,
the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's
Hospital, in Boston. Born in South Korea, Kim also served as
director of Harvard's François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and
Human Rights.
Kim has focused on many of the diseases that plague emerging
market nations. He is a co-founder of Partners In Health and a
former director of the HIV/AIDS Department at the World Health
Organization. In the latter role, Kim was able to
provide treatment to 3 million new HIV and AIDS patients in
developing countries in only four years after the program's launch
in September 2003.
In a speech in late July , the new World Bank
president pledged to dedicate the organization's efforts to
mitigating poverty through the eradication of AIDS. "Success
in the AIDS response depends on partnerships," he said. "On a very
personal level, I am committed to strengthening the World Bank's
multilateral alliances with UNAIDS and the Global Fund; our
partnerships with U.N. technical agencies, including WHO and
UNICEF; and our collaboration with PEPFAR and other
bilaterals."
He added that "strong partnership with civil society that
delivers results for the poor will be a signature of my
presidency."
Kim noted that in 2008 the proportion of people in the
developing world living on less than $1.25 per day was 22 percent,
less than half of the 1990 figure. The Millennium Development Goal
of halving the incidence of extreme poverty had been reached, he
said. "But today 1.3 billion of the world's people still live in
absolute poverty. This is intolerable. We can and must end absolute
poverty in our lifetime. To do so, we'll need to share know-how
across the boundaries of institutions and development fields. And
we'll need to use that know-how to build systems that can
sustainably meet human needs."
Kim pointed out that the emerging market middle class is
burgeoning and managed to grow even through the Great Recession. A more affluent population results in greater
demand for medical care . Refocusing the World Bank from
its traditional massive infrastructure profits toward the
alleviation of poverty will be very beneficial for the expansion of
the emerging market consumer class.
As a result of positive demographic trends in emerging markets,
stocks with exposure to emerging market healthcare like China
Medical Technologies ( CMEDQ , quote ) could
benefit.
