EBRD: There’s no place like home

Suma Chakrabarti doesn’t give up easily. Less than a year after the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) failed in his bid to persuade shareholders to expand its remit to sub-Saharan Africa, he has announced plans to raise the issue again at this year’s annual meeting in May.

In some respects, Chakrabarti’s proposals make sense. The EBRD has plenty of capital and has been struggling for years to find ways to deploy it in its traditional countries of operation, particularly since the bank’s shareholders voted to suspend activity in Russia in 2014.