Vlad Tenev

I know a little bit about it.

Is it private?

technically private so that the different countries own shares in the World Bank Group.

At least this is how it is for the IFC, the International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank Group.

It's like the IFC

IMF and then the World Bank itself.

And then there's another one called MIGA.

I forget what it stands for.

It's kind of different than other banks.

So the shareholders are countries.

And my understanding of it at least is, so the IFC you can think of as kind of a venture capital firm.

So they make investments in private enterprise.

On behalf of governments.

On behalf of their shareholders, yeah, which tend to be governments.

Is it only governments or can other people invest with them?

don't think others can invest so it's only good yeah i think it's only governments so yeah you can think of it as a venture capital firm so my mom my mom's job was to go and like like underwrite investments in you know it would be like a chemical plant or a fertilizer company or she did a university at one point and you know they invest for a return

but different than a typical venture capital structure because there's really no carry that accrues to the partners.

I think all of it goes to the shareholders, which are the countries.

And then there's the IMF, which sort of like provides monetary assistance to countries, not to private enterprise.

So if there's a currency crisis, the IMF can step in and actually provide assistance to stabilize it.