Christine Lagarde

Professional career

Lagarde joined Baker & McKenzie, a large Chicago-based international law firm, in 1981. She was a director of two of the firm's subsidiaries in tax havens. She handled major antitrust and labour cases, was made partner after six years and was named head of the firm in Western Europe. She joined the executive committee in 1995 and was elected the company's first female chairman in October 1999. Three years later she was reelected. At Baker & McKenzie Lagarde promulgated a “client first” approach whereby lawyers anticipated client needs rather than solely reacting to exigent situations.

In 2004, Lagarde became president of the Global Strategic Committee.

Ministerial career

As France's trade minister between 2005 and May 2007, Lagarde prioritized opening new markets for the country's products, focusing on the technology sector. On 18 May 2007, she was moved to the Ministry of Agriculture as part of the government of François Fillon. The following month she joined Fillon's cabinet in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Finance and Employment. She was the only member of the French political class to condemn Jean-Paul Guerlain's racist remarks of 2010. In government, she implemented liberal economic reforms, such as liberalizing the labor market, lowering estate taxes, and an austerity plan for public services.

International Monetary Fund

Appointment

On 25 May 2011, Lagarde announced her candidacy to be head of the IMF to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, upon his resignation. Her candidacy received the support of the British, Indian, United States, Brazilian, Russian, Chinese and German governments. The governor of the Bank of Mexico (and former Secretary of Finance) Agustín Carstens was also nominated for the post. His candidacy was supported by many Latin American governments, as well as Spain, Canada and Australia.

On 28 June 2011, the IMF board elected Lagarde as its next managing director and chairman for a five-year term, starting on 5 July 2011. The IMF's executive board praised both Lagarde and Carstens as well-qualified, but decided on the former by consensus. Lagarde became the first woman to be elected as the head of the IMF. Carstens would have been the first non-European. Her appointment came amid the intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis especially in Greece, with fears looming of loan defaults. The United States in particular supported her speedy appointment in light of the fragility of Europe's economic situation.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that Lagarde's "exceptional talent and broad experience will provide invaluable leadership for this indispensable institution at a critical time for the global economy." President Nicolas Sarkozy referred to Lagarde's appointment as "a victory for France." Oxfam, a charity working in developing nations, called the appointment process "farcical" and argued that what it saw as a lack of transparency hurt the IMF's credibility.

On 17 December 2015, Michel Sapin, French Finance Minister, said that Lagarde could stay on as head of the IMF, despite being charged with criminal negligence. Throughout her time at the IMF, she repeatedly ruled herself out of the races to secure a top job in Europe, including the positions of President of the European Commission and President of the European Central Bank. On 2 July 2019, Lagarde was nominated to serve as the next president of the ECB, to succeed Mario Draghi. She subsequently submitted her resignation as managing director.

Viewpoints

In July 2010, Lagarde told the PBS NewsHour that the IMF's lending program for distressed European countries was "a very massive plan, totally unexpected, totally counter-treaty, because it wasn't scheduled in the treaty that we should do a bailout program, as we did." She also said, "we had essentially a trillion dollars on the table to confront any market attack that would target any country, whether it's Greece, Spain, Portugal, or anybody within the eurozone." With respect to the French economy, she stated that besides short-term stimulus efforts: "we must, very decisively, cut our deficit and reduce our debt."

In public remarks made right after her appointment, Lagarde stated that both the IMF and EU required Greek austerity measures as a prerequisite for further aid. She said, "If I have one message tonight about Greece, it is to call on the Greek political opposition to support the party that is currently in power in a spirit of national unity." She said of her predecessor that: "The IMF has taken up the challenges of the crisis thanks to the actions of Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and to his team as well." On 25 December 2011, Lagarde argued that the world economy was at risk and urged Europeans to unify in terms of the debt crisis facing the continent.

In July 2012, as the Greek economy continued to decline, and the country's leaders asked for an easing of the terms of external assistance, Lagarde said she was "not in the negotiation or renegotiation mood at all." A year later, though, with her own organization conceding that its "rescue" package for Greece had fallen short of what was required, Lagarde—having previously said that Greece's debt burden was "sustainable"—decided that Greece would not recover unless its debt was written off in a meaningful way. According to Yanis Varoufakis, the combative former Finance Minister of Greece, Lagarde and others at the top of the IMF were quite sympathetic behind closed doors, while stating that inside the Eurogroup there were "a few kind words and that was it". As the crisis peaked again in summer 2015, Lagarde's organization made headlines by calling for massive debt relief for Greece, a call she reiterated personally. In 2016, the IMF refused to participate with eurozone countries in further emergency financing for Greece, because concrete measures to relieve the country of its debt burden remained absent.

Questioned about her economic philosophy, Lagarde has described herself as "with Adam Smith—that is, liberal."

"Payback" controversy

In an interview in May 2012, Lagarde was asked about the Greek government-debt crisis. She mentioned Greek tax avoidance, and assented to the interviewer's suggestion that Greeks had "had a nice time" but now "it is payback time." Her comments provoked controversy, with future Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stating, "We don't need her compassion," and then-Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos saying she had "insulted the Greek people." In an effort to quell the negative response, the next day Lagarde made a post to her Facebook page saying: "As I have said many times before, I am very sympathetic to the Greek people and the challenges they are facing." Within 24 hours, over 10,000 comments had been left in response, many of them obscene.

In response to Lagarde's belief that not enough Greeks paid their taxes, Professor Emeritus John Weeks of the University of London said, "The moral weight of Christine Lagarde's matronising of the Greeks to pay their taxes is not strengthened by the fact that, as director of the IMF, she is in receipt of a tax-free annual salary of $468,000 (£298,000, plus perks)." Robert W. Wood, in a Forbes article, wrote that "No taxes is the norm for most United Nations employees covered by a convention on diplomatic relations signed by most nations."

Comment on King Abdullah

In January 2015, on the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Lagarde said "he was a strong believer in pushing forward women's rights", prompting a number of observers to comment on the life of women generally in Saudi Arabia.

Loan to Argentina

In 2019, the IMF granted Argentina a loan of $57 billion - equivalent to 10% of GDP. The loan, then the largest in the Fund's history, sparked controversy within the financial institution, as such a sum was far too high for such an economically fragile country. U.S. President Donald Trump and IMF President Christine Lagarde, however, interceded to have this loan request validated to support Mauricio Macri, struggling in the polls in the run-up to the 2019 presidential election. To get this deal through the official analysis grid, IMF teams used growth assumptions that would turn out to be profoundly unrealistic. The loan was then disbursed very quickly, before the election, but would lead Argentina into a serious debt crisis, with the country unable to meet its debts.

European Central Bank

Nomination

On 2 July 2019, Christine Lagarde was nominated by the European Council to succeed Mario Draghi as President of the European Central Bank (ECB) on 1 November 2019. On 17 September 2019, the European Parliament voted via secret ballot to recommend her to the position, with 394 in favour, 206 opposed, and 49 abstentions.

In September 2019 writers for Bloomberg opined that as president Lagarde was expected to maintain the accommodative monetary policy of her predecessor, Mario Draghi. When addressing the European Parliament's ECON Committee ahead of her appointment, Lagarde also expressed her willingness to make the ECB play a role in fighting climate change and to carry out a review of the ECB's monetary policy framework. In July 2019 Prince Michael of Liechtenstein worried that Lagarde had "been extremely supportive of heavy deficit spending and cheap money" and felt that this fact portended ill. Writers at the Wall Street Journal felt that her strength lay in her flexibility, and she was "a diplomat and negotiator, not a technocrat or economist".

In post

One of Lagarde's first initiatives at the helm of the ECB was to launch an overall strategic review, an exercise not conducted at the ECB for 17 years; the Financial Times opined that this change "set up a clash" with the head of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann. By contrast, the Banque de France governor François Villeroy de Galhau (and member of the ECB’s governing council) was supportive, as well as an open letter whose 164 signatories included academics, economists, trade unions and environmental activists and 62 organizations like Greenpeace and Attac, who characterized the plan for the ECB to purchase financial instruments of the fossil fuel industry as "particularly shocking" . As part of this exercise, she successfully pushed the ECB to adopt an action plan to address climate change. The action plan resulted in the implementation of green rules ("tilting") in the purchase of corporate bonds programme.

In July 2024 Lagarde told reporters in Frankfurt that "implementing the EU’s revised economic governance framework fully and without delay will help governments bring down budget deficits and debt ratios on a sustained basis. This was discussed, and we believe that it’s a very strong endorsement of the principle of discipline, so that all member states that have adhered and agreed to a set of rules under the fiscal governance framework will actually apply those rules and principles." At the time, Belgium, Greece, Spain, France and Italy were considered by the ECB "high risk in the medium term". France and Italy were among several nations "scolded in June [2024] by the European Commission for running deficits well above the bloc’s 3 per cent ceiling." Another publication said she warned at the ECB Forum in Sintra about respect for EU budgetary rules: the ECB was "concerned about the fiscal rules that must be respected within the EU and the structural reforms that will lead to an improvement in productivity, which is the only way for Europe to remain strong and prosperous."

In September 2024 Lagarde announced that the ECB's primary interest rate would be cut to 3.5% because of weak eurozone growth, following of drop of inflation to 2.2%.

On 12 September 2024, after the Draghi report on EU competitiveness had been published, Lagarde said that the ECB would not help individual member states implement its recommendations: "Structural reforms are not the responsibility of the central bank — they are the responsibility of governments."

In February 2026, there were media report of her early resignation to allow outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to nominate her successor, ahead of French presidential elections. In July 2026, Lagarde said that she could leave the ECB before the end of her term to play a role in France’s 2027 presidential election, although she stated that running for president was not on her agenda. Later that month, she ruled out standing in the election, putting an end to speculation about a possible candidacy.

Other activities

European Union institutions

• European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), ex officio chair of the General Board (since 2019)
• European Investment Bank (EIB), ex officio member of the board of governors (2007–2011)

International organizations

• Bank for International Settlements (BIS), ex officio member of the board of directors (since 2019)
• Asian Development Bank (ADB), ex officio member of the board of governors (2007–2011)
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), ex officio member of the board of governors (2007–2011)
• International Monetary Fund (IMF), ex officio member of the board of governors (2007–2011)
• World Bank, ex officio member of the board of governors (2007–2011)

Non-profit organizations

• World Economic Forum (WEF), member of the board of trustees (since 2011)

Academic institutions

• Honorary fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge

Controversy

The Lagarde list

In 2010 Lagarde, then finance minister of France, sent a list of 1,991 names of Greek customers who were potential tax avoiders with bank accounts at HSBC's Geneva branch to the Greek government.

On 28 October 2012, Greek reporter and editor Kostas Vaxevanis claimed to be in possession of the list and published a document with more than 2,000 names in his magazine Hot Doc. He was immediately arrested on charges of breaching privacy laws with a possible sentence of up to two years in prison. After a public outcry, Vaxevanis was found not guilty three days later. Vaxevanis then faced a retrial (the Greek authorities were yet to charge anyone on the list), but was acquitted again. A few days before the Greek general elections of January 2015, when it was clear that left-wing Syriza would come to power, the financial crimes police of the conservative government of Antonis Samaras shredded reams of documents pertaining to corruption cases.

Conviction of negligence in allowing the misuse of public funds

On 3 August 2011, La Cour de Justice de la République, a special court in France set up to judge ministers and public officials for alleged crimes committed while in office, ordered an investigation into Lagarde's role in a €403 million arbitration deal in favour of businessman Bernard Tapie when she was finance minister in 2007. On 20 March 2013, Lagarde's apartment in Paris was raided by French police as part of the investigation. On 24 May 2013, after two days of questioning at the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), Lagarde was assigned the status of "assisted witness", meaning that she herself was not under investigation in the affair. According to a press report from June 2013, Lagarde was described by Stéphane Richard, the CEO of France Telecom (a former aide to Lagarde when she was finance minister), who was himself put under formal investigation in the case, as having been fully briefed before approving the arbitration process which benefitted Bernard Tapie.

In 2013, the press revealed an undated hand-written letter seized by investigators during a search of Christine Lagarde's Paris home, in which she appears to express her full allegiance to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy: "Use me for as long as it suits you and suits your action and your casting. (...) If you use me, I need you as a guide and as a support: without a guide, I risk being ineffective, without a support I risk having little credibility. With my immense admiration. Christine L."

Subsequently, in August 2014 the CJR announced that it had formally approved a negligence investigation into Lagarde's role in the arbitration of the Tapie case. On 17 December 2015, the CJR ordered Lagarde to stand trial before it for alleged negligence in handling the Tapie arbitration approval.

In December 2016, the court found Lagarde guilty of negligence but declined to impose either a fine or a custodial penalty.

Media

Lagarde was interviewed in the documentary film Inside Job (2010), which later won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The American fashion magazine Vogue profiled Lagarde in September 2011.

Lagarde was portrayed by Laila Robins in the HBO television film Too Big to Fail (2011), which was based on the popular non-fiction book of the same name by The New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Meryl Streep based parts of Miranda Priestly's appearance in the feature film The Devil Wears Prada (2006) on Lagarde, citing her "unassailable elegance and authority".

Lagarde presented the 2014 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, titled "A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century".

Recognition

Lagarde received the insignia of Commander of the National Order of Merit from Emmanuel Macron in February 2022.

Awards

• 2011 – 9th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2012 – 8th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2013 – 7th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2014 – 5th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2015 – 6th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2016 – 6th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2017 – 8th Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2017 – #1 in the List of 100 Most Influential People in Multinational Organisations, awarded by UK-based company Richtopia
• 2018 – 3rd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2019 – CARE Humanitarian Award, awarded by CARE
• 2019 – Distinguished International Leadership Award, awarded by the Atlantic Council
• 2019 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2020 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2022 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2023 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2024 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine
• 2025 – 2nd Most Powerful Woman in the World, named by Forbes magazine

Honours

• Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (2000)
• Officer of the Légion d'honneur (6 April 2012)
• Commander of the Ordre national du Mérite (2021)
• Commander of the Ordre du Mérite agricole (2008)
• Commander of the Ordre du Mérite Maritime (2007)
• Grand Officer of the National Order of the Ivory Coast (2013)
• Medal of the Order of Friendship (2010)
• Medal of the Order of Dubai (2016)

Honorary doctorate

• Honorary doctorate from KU Leuven (Belgium) – awarded at KU Leuven Kulak
• Honorary doctorate from Université de Montréal.

Personal life

Lagarde has had three known partners. The first is the French financial analyst Wilfried Lagarde, with whom she has two sons, Pierre-Henri Lagarde (born 1986) and Thomas Lagarde (born 1988); they married in 1982 and divorced in 1992. The second is the British businessman Eachran Gilmour; sources differ on whether they were ever married. Since 2006, her partner has been the entrepreneur Xavier Giocanti from Marseille, a fellow-student at Université Paris X. Some sources say they have married, but not when.

She is a health-conscious vegetarian, and her hobbies include regular trips to the gym, cycling, and swimming.

She speaks French, English and Spanish. After she took office as president of the European Central Bank, it was reported that she intended to learn German.