BANK OF Israel governor Stanley Fischer, who helped the International Monetary Fund end crises in Mexico, Russia and southeast Asia, faces the dual challenges of age and nationality in his quest for the lender’s top job.

Mr Fischer (67), the IMF’s first deputy managing director from 1994-2001, has joined French finance minister Christine Lagarde and Mexican central bank chief Agustin Carstens in the race to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned last month after he was charged with attempted rape, as managing director.

“An exceptional and unplanned opportunity has crossed my path . . . to run for the head of the IMF,” Mr Fischer said. “After much deliberation, I have decided to pursue it.”

Israel’s central bank said the fund will have to decide whether to amend its bylaws, which stipulate that its managing director be less than 65 years at the time of selection, or reject his candidacy.

The fund’s members would also have to end an informal agreement under which the head is always a European, while an American heads the World Bank.

Mr Fischer is getting a late start in a race that has seen Ms Lagarde lock up support among European Union nations. While the US, the fund’s single biggest shareholder, hasn’t announced backing for anyone, favouring a non-European could mean relinquishing control of the World Bank – an outcome that members of Congress who decide on funding for development banks have said they oppose.

He “would be a fine candidate, but despite his African upbringing and Israeli experience, Fischer is seen first as a US citizen because of his tenure as deputy managing director at the fund”, said Bessma Momani, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada who specialises in the IMF.

Mr Fischer holds US and Israeli citizenship, was born in an area of northern Rhodesia that is now part of Zambia and holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the London School of Economics.

Ms Lagarde has benefited from the failure of emerging markets to coalesce around a candidate from their own ranks and has concentrated on her gender and role in European efforts to head off a Greek sovereign-debt default.

The fund has said it plans to make a choice by the end of the month.

Mr Fischer emigrated from the US to Israel in 2005 to take up the Bank of Israel governorship and has described the top IMF post as a “terrific” job.

He said the euro zone’s debt crisis doesn’t require the fund to elect a European candidate.– (Bloomberg)