Kim, 59, began his second five-year term at the bank on July 1, 2017. He helped the lender win support from its member countries in April for a $US13 billion ($18.2 billion) capital increase, after the US dropped proposals to limit the World Bank's resources. Preferred candidate Trump will now be expected to put forward a preferred American candidate to replace Kim, who was nominated by Barack Obama. The choice could prove controversial if the nominee shares Trump's own disdain for international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and NATO. The President's National Security Adviser, John Bolton, wrote an article in 2016 in which he cited arguments for privatising the World Bank, while Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass has questioned why the bank lends so much money to China when the nation already has access to global financial markets. Trump's decision could affect how the bank deploys its capital at a time when emerging markets are facing growing stress from rising US interest rates and trade tensions. The World Bank committed nearly $US64 billion in loans to developing countries in the fiscal year ended June 30 last year.

Selection process The US is the largest shareholder in the development lender, which was conceived during the Second World War to finance the reconstruction of Europe. It has since focused on alleviating extreme poverty around the world. An American has run the World Bank since it was created in 1945. Credit:Bloomberg An American has run the bank since it was established in 1945. Its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, has always been led by a European, as part of an unwritten understanding between Western powers. Former French finance minister Christine Lagarde is the current head of the IMF. But some nations have been pushing for a representative from emerging markets. The selection process is managed by the bank's board of executive directors, which represents the lender's 189 member countries.

Contentious debate "If these institutions are to be made more appealing to the rest of the world, the lock hold that the United States and Europe have on both the president of the World Bank and managing director of the IMF has to end," said Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and now a finance professor at the University of Chicago. The rise of populism and the contentious debate over globalisation is raising the political pressure on leaders of organisations such as the World Bank, he said in an interview. "Even without the restriction that this be an American, it's going to be hard to find good people to take these positions in this difficult global environment," said Rajan. Other experts believe Trump may find it difficult to push through his desired candidate. "It's always really been about coalitions, and the one key coalition that has held for 75 years is the US-European one," said Scott Morris, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and former deputy assistant secretary for development finance at the US Treasury under Obama.

"It's hard to see a strong basis for that continuing to hold." 'No sure thing' The Trump administration may face resistance from other countries if the president puts forward a candidate openly hostile to the bank, he said. "They have to go out and get those votes from other member countries, and there's no sure thing." The US President traditionally nominates a candidate. Credit:AP While the US President traditionally nominates the person who eventually heads the bank, the lender's executive board has the final say. The board said Monday it will immediately begin the process for picking Kim's successor.

Kim was appointed in 2012 to succeed Robert Zoellick. In that race, Kim beat out Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Nigeria's finance minister, and Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian national and professor at Columbia University in New York. Kim was previously president of Dartmouth College and head of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organisation. He was born in Seoul and grew up in Iowa. He has a medical degree and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University. Kim's resignation caught staff and the board off guard, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Kim notified the executive board at a meeting Monday morning, after giving little indication that he was planning to leave, the person said. Kim cultivated close relations with Trump's daughter Ivanka, who works as a White House adviser. In 2017, the bank started a fund to finance women entrepreneurs, an idea it developed in tandem with the President's daughter. The fund planned to invest more than $US1 billion to improve access to capital for women. Bloomberg