Christine Lagarde, who has taken her campaign to head the International Monetary Fund to India and China while keeping her fans posted on Twitter, may be poised to defeat her main rival, Agustin Carstens.

With hours before the deadline to submit nominees, the French finance minister has the backing of European Union countries, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has voiced his support. Carstens, Mexico’s central bank governor, says he’s backed by 12 Latin American nations while he hasn’t garnered endorsements from Argentina and Brazil.
Lagarde has benefited from the failure of emerging markets to coalesce around a candidate from their own ranks after vowing to end a six-decade European lock on the position. She has tried to turn attention away from her nationality by focusing on her gender and her role in European efforts to head off a Greek sovereign-debt default.
“There’s a wide perception that Lagarde is the front- runner,” said Domenico Lombardi, a former IMF board official and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “She’s seen by many of her political interlocutors as the best chance to contain the turmoil in the euro area and avoid that it could escalate to a full flow-blown systemic crisis.”
The next IMF chief will preside over an institution reeling from last month’s arrest of its former managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on charges of attempted rape. The former French finance minister pleaded not guilty.
---------------Biggest shareholder
The U.S., the IMF’s single largest shareholder with almost 17 percent of the votes, hasn’t announced support for a candidate, and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said both Lagarde and Carstens are qualified.
Backing a non-European for the IMF could mean relinquishing U.S. control of the World Bank -- an outcome members of Congress who decide on funding for development banks are not ready to contemplate. Under an informal agreement, an American has always headed the World Bank, while a European has led the IMF.
Lagarde, 55, who was a partner in Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie LLP, still may face a legal setback of her own. A French court is considering whether to investigate if Lagarde abused her power in 2007 when she sent a case involving a supporter of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to arbitration. Her action resulted in a 385 million-euro ($559 million) award to businessman Bernard Tapie, who was once a minister in a Socialist French government. Lagarde has denied wrongdoing.
-----------------Emergency loans
The IMF approved a record $91.7 billion in emergency loans last year and provides a third of bailout packages in Europe.
“The IMF job is one of the most important in the whole world economy,” said C. Fred Bergsten, who heads the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “Managing directors do make a difference.”
Grigori Marchenko, the chairman of the central bank of Kazakhstan and a declared candidate, told the Daily Telegraph on Thursday that Lagarde’s victory was a “done deal.”
Marchenko said his country’s authorities would be in consultations with other nations over his candidacy until the nomination process ends. The deadline for nominations was midnight in Washington on Friday.
Lagarde and Carstens have embarked on world tours to lobby governments for support.
--------------------Trip to Brazil
Lagarde went to Brazil last week and is headed to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. She has sought to reassure officials in these countries that she will give them a bigger voice at the agency, which lends to nations in financial distress.
“The IMF does not belong to anybody, it belongs to the 187 members of the fund,” she told reporters on Thursday in Beijing. “Management of the fund does not belong to any particular” nation or region. She also said she was “very positive” about her trip to China, while adding that China’s position on her candidacy belongs to that country’s leaders.
On Thursday she answered questions from Twitter users, describing her strengths as “my ability to include, to build consensus, to mediate when needed, to give confidence, and to reach out to governments.”
Carstens, a former finance minister, has said he expects emerging markets to support his candidacy once there is a final list of nominees. The IMF board aims to pick a candidate by June 30.
--------------------Emerging markets
He says emerging markets should have a greater voice in the management of the IMF and supports the use of measures such as capital controls and accumulation of foreign reserves to fight excessive capital inflows to developing nations. He has criticized European nations for publicly backing Lagarde before all the candidates are known.
“I find it strange that they are advocating in some forums for an open, transparent, merit-based candidate and they have made up their minds before the candidates are on the table,” Carstens said in a June 2 interview in Sao Paulo. “All the other countries are playing by the book.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
Highlight: Lagarde has benefited from the failure of emerging markets to coalesce around a candidate from their own ranks after vowing to end a six-decade European lock on the position.
Caption: French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde speaks at a press conference in Beijing on June 9, 2011. Lagarde is the frontrunner to lead the IMF. Getty images