White House considering PepsiCo ex-CEO Indra Nooyi for WB chief

WASHINGTON: The White House is considering Indra K Nooyi, the former chief executive officer of PepsiCo, for the position of the World Bank president, according to several people familiar with the process.

Ms. Nooyi, who stepped down from her role at PepsiCo last August after leading the company for 12 years, has been courted as an administration ally by Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, who is playing a role in the selection of a nominee, reported international media.

The decision-making process for the top post at the World Bank is fluid and in its initial stages, and early front-runners and candidates often fall off the radar, or withdraw from consideration, before the president makes his ultimate pick. Trump often makes his own gut decisions about whom to choose.

It is unclear whether Ms. Nooyi would accept the nomination if chosen by the administration, but Ms. Trump, who has written on Twitter that she views Ms. Nooyi as a “mentor + inspiration,” has floated her name as a potential successor. Ms. Nooyi has dined with the president and other business leaders at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

She drew criticism for assuming an advisory role on his business council, which was disbanded after many chief executives quit following Trump’s comments that blamed “many sides” for white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.

Negative comments that Ms. Nooyi made after the 2016 election, during which she did not publicly endorse any candidate, are seen as a potential roadblock to her nomination. Trump’s win, she said, created a lot of questions among her daughters and her employees.

“They were all in mourning,” Ms. Nooyi said in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’s DealBook conference in 2016. “Our employees are all crying. And the question that they’re asking, especially those who are not white: ‘Are we safe?’ Women are asking, ‘Are we safe?’ The LGBT people are asking, ‘Are we safe?’ I never thought I’d have had to answer those questions.”

Ms. Nooyi later tried to clarify her remarks, and a spokesman for PepsiCo told Fortune magazine that “Mrs. Nooyi misspoke. She was referring to the reaction of a group of employees she spoke to who were apprehensive about the outcome of the election. She never intended to imply that all employees feel the same way.”