South Africa's Trevor Manuel has ruled himself out of the race for the International Monetary Fund's top job, making French finance minister Christine Lagarde an even firmer favourite.
Emerging market powers like Russia, India and China have declared they want an end to Europe's grip on the top job at the international lender, calling time on a pact that puts the IMF in European hands and the World Bank run by an American.
Manuel, a respected former finance minister, told a news conference it would be 'most unfortunate' if the IMF ended up with a European. The US and Europe hold 48% of votes at the IMF, emerging nations just 12%.
Manuel, who handled Africa's biggest economy deftly for a decade, has long been touted as an ideal developing-world candidate and many had seen him winning more support than the only other declared rival to Lagarde, Mexican Central Bank chief Agustin Carstens, whose policy views are viewed as too conservative by many of his emerging market peers.
Lagarde, an adept negotiator with hands-on experience in the euro zone's debt crisis, is seen as the clear favourite despite a legal investigation into her role in a 2008 arbitration pay-out that will hang over her candidacy.
A top French court today put off until July 8 its decision on whether to open a formal inquiry into allegations brought by opposition left-wing deputies that she abused her authority in approving a €285m pay-out to a businessman friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A French finance ministry official told Reuters the legal process was proceeding normally and Lagarde earlier told reporters in Lisbon, where she attended the African Development Bank's annual meeting, that she was confident about the outcome.
Lagarde has flown to Brazil, India and China to tout her merits for the IMF job, and carries on her tour to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this weekend. On Thursday she spent an hour tweeting with the general public over her candidacy.
The African Union said yesterday it wanted to see a non-European in the job but emerging market powers have failed to coalesce behind one candidate to challenge Europe's traditional grip on the job. The IMF will name its new managing director on June 30.
Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn quit the post in May over charges he tried to rape a New York hotel maid.
Meanwhile, Reuters has reported that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in talks about leaving her job next year to head the World Bank.
Four of the IMF's 10 managing directors since 1946 have been French but Lagarde, 55, would be the first woman in the job.
Carstens has an economics PhD from the University of Chicago, a haven for proponents of deregulation and laissez-faire economics.
