CHRISTINE LAGARDE, 61
IMF MANAGING DIRECTOR
ALMOST a year ago to the day, silver-fringed Christine Lagarde strode imperiously into the Treasury to deliver her apocalyptic warnings on Britain’s economic future.
Tall, tanned and handsome (though the Guardian’s fawning description of her as ‘the world’s sexiest woman’ might be a little de trop, as they say back home), the silky International Monetary Fund boss oozed flare and haughty Gallic soph-ist-ic-ation.
With all the misplaced confidence of a loopy Roman soothsayer, she told the gathered throng that a vote to leave the European Union was a vote for financial Armageddon. A UK recession, she said, would be a near certainty. ‘It’s going to be pretty bad to very, very bad,’ she intoned gravely.
Fellow economists murmured approvingly, while Labrador-eyed George Osborne gazed back at his guest like a pubescent teenager pining for the school nurse.
Twelve months have since passed and, to misquote Harold Wilson, a year has proved to be an extremely long time in politics.
The British people, as we know, delivered an upturned digit to Lagarde and her fearmongering friends across the Channel.
The sun still shines, the globe still spins. As for the British economy, rather than being ‘very, very bad’ the current outlook is really rather good.
At this week’s IMF spring meeting, hosted by Lagarde in Washington, Britain was given a bigger growth forecast upgrade than any other major country. The IMF said it expects the British economy to grow by 2pc in 2017, up from January’s forecast of 1.5pc.
THE political careers of Cameron and Osborne – Lagarde’s rosbif allies – have been consigned to the dustbin, while she can count herself very fortunate not to have been swapping her expensive costumes for a less flattering all-in-one orange jumpsuit.
Last December she was found guilty of negligence by a French court for approving a massive pay-out of taxpayers’ money to controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie during her previous job as French finance minister, though no penalty was imposed. But while she somehow clung to her role as IMF chief, events of the past year have served to remove much of the lustrous French polish that had hitherto coated her impressive career.
Born Christine Lalouette, the eldest of four children, she received a devout Catholic upbringing near the Normandy town of Rouen. Her parents were both linguistics teachers, which might go some way to explaining Lagarde’s dextrous command for languages. As well as boasting perfect English (peppered with easy-going slang) she’s also said to possess passable Spanish and Greek. And while attending the local Lycée, she famously represented France at synchronised swimming.
Following her father’s death of motor neurone disease when she was 17, she took a scholarship to Holton-Arms school for girls in Maryland. Although she returned to Paris to complete a law degree, her experience in the US changed her. She went back to work for the Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie, where in 1999 she rose to become its first female head.
In 2005, she came back to France to take up a junior government position, causing immediate uproar by daring to criticise France’s notoriously archaic employment laws. She survived that faux pas, and following a brief stint as agriculture minister, President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed her finance minister in 2007.
Government life proved tough. A teetotal vegan, she was always regarded as a bit of an outsider. The French political world is largely dominated by males who’ve attended Paris’s Ecole nationale d’administration, the elite school for civil servants, which Lagarde twice failed to get into. Sarkozy ungallantly let it be known he regarded her as ‘lightweight’.
When the chance to get back to Washington arose in 2011, following the resignation of IMF sex pest Dominique Strauss-Kahn, she grabbed it with both hands.
ON the personal front, she has been married twice, and has two grown-up sons with her first husband, financial analyst Wilfred Lagarde. She is believed to be in a long-term relationship with glossyhaired Corsican entrepreneur Xavier Giocanti, 62, however details remain sketchy since it is distinctly unFrench to discuss matters of the boudoir.
Lagarde remains in post at the IMF until 2021. It is predicted one of those who’ll be vying for her job is Bank of England governor Mark Carney, whose Brexit warnings ahead of the referendum were similarly dire.
Whatever the French is for humble pie, it’s fair to say both these soi-disant economic titans were consuming vast dollops of the stuff in America’s capital this week.