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 The former French finance minister who trained as a lawyer has no
obvious challengers and has long been open to serving another
five-year term. The prime ministers of Britain and France backed her
publicly on Thursday.
"I am candidate to a new mandate. I was honored to receive from the
start of the process the backing of France, Britain, Germany, China,
Korea," the 60 year-old told France 2 television in an interview
from Davos.
Germany's finance ministry weighed in with its own endorsement on
Friday.
"Germany welcomes the renewed candidacy of Christine Lagarde for a
further term as managing director of the IMF. Ms Lagarde was a
prudent and successful crisis manager in the difficult times after
the financial crisis," the finance ministry said in a statement.
The first woman to head the fund on her appointment in 2011, Lagarde
has been dogged off-and-on since then for her role in a long-running
business scandal while she was France's finance minister.
Last month, a French judge ordered her to face trial for negligence
in a special ministerial court over the 2008 payout of some 400
million euros ($430 million) to businessman Bernard Tapie.
Tapie himself was ordered last year to repay the money, which he
received as state compensation for a business transaction in which
he later claimed he had been defrauded.
Lagarde has said she will appeal that decision.
"I feel that I always acted in the state's interest and within the
law. I have my conscience for me in this affair. I hope the courts
.... will agree with that," she told France 2 on Friday.
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GRIT YOUR TEETH AND SMILE
A synchronized swimmer in her youth, Lagarde once said in an
interview it was that sport which taught her the maxim "grit your
teeth and smile" in the man's world she moves in and where her
designer clothes stand out in a sea of dark suits.
She joined the international law firm Baker & McKenzie in Paris aged
25 after completing a master's degree in English and labor law, and
quickly rose to the top of the Chicago-based firm before entering
politics.
As finance minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy, she
attracted criticism early in her tenure by suggesting that the
French had become work-shy and that navel-gazing hindered reform.
Born in Paris and raised in the northern port city of Le Havre,
Lagarde is a vocal proponent of women as senior executives, once
noting drily that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters, it
might have survived.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Paul Carrel writing by Andrew
Callus; Editing by Geert De Clercq, Louise Ireland and Hugh Lawson)
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