World Bank’s Jim Yong Kim embraces private equity

Jim Yong Kim has journeyed on the road to Damascus. Just as the early Christian apostle Paul was suddenly converted to a new faith, the recently installed president of the World Bank Group has similarly changed belief in this case, by realising the need for private capital to drive economic development in emerging markets.

Kim revealed his change of heart while speaking in Washington, DC at the annual global private equity conference organised by the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association Empea and the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank.

Now less than a year into his presidency, Kim, a former anthropologist and health...