March 3rd 2022

Masato Kanda is Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, Japanese Ministry of Finance. Since he joined the ministry in 1987, he has held many senior positions, including Deputy Director General of the Budget Bureau (2017‐2018), Deputy Vice‐Minister for Policy Planning and Coordination (2019), and Director‐General of the International Bureau (2020). He has previously held senior roles at the World Bank and OECD. He serves as Chairman for the Corporate Governance Committee, OECD (2016‐ ). He obtained his M.Phil in Economics from Oxford University in 1991 after his B.A. in Law and Politics from the University of Tokyo in 1987.

John Lipsky is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. Prior to joining SAIS in 2012, he had served as the International Monetary Fund’s First Deputy Managing Director. He currently serves as the Chair of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Co-Chair of the Aspen Institute’s Program on the World Economy, as Vice Chair of the Center for Global Development, and as Vice Chair of the Bretton Woods Committee. 

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi is currently Chairman of Societe Generale. He was previously member of the Executive Board of the ECB. He started his career at Banca d’Italia and moved thereafter to the European Monetary Institute and the Italian Treasury as Director General for International Affairs. He has an extended experience in several companies’ boards. He graduated in Economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain and obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Chicago.

Chantavarn Sucharitakul is the Assistant Governor of the Communications and Corporate Relations Group at the Bank of Thailand. She is a career central banker who has assumed several key managerial roles with responsibilities ranging from monetary policy, banking supervision, financial sector development to international cooperation. She was also appointed Alternate Executive Director of the South East Asia Voting Group at the IMF in Washington D.C. between 2006-2008. She holds a Master Degree in Development Economics from Australian National University and attended the Advanced Management Program (AMP 179) at Harvard Business School in 2010.

Wu Qing is a member of Academic Committee of Macro Forum of China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), former Senior Research Fellow at Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council. Mr. Wu has 20 years’ experience on public policy research and decision-making consultant at DRC. He was the chief economist at one of the China’s big four AMCs, and served as independent non-executive directors at two banks. He was an adjunct professor at the Dalian University of Technology, and currently he begins his adjunct teaching career at the School of Business, China University of Political Science and Law.

Hiroshi Watanabe after graduating from the University of Tokyo joined the Ministry of Finance of Japan (MOF) in 1972. Before retiring as Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs in 2007, he occupied various senior positions in the Taxation Bureau and others at the MOF. He later took high positions in the Japan Policy Bank and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) before his appointment as the President of JBIC in 2013. Since October 2016 he has been the President of the IIMA.