Bio

Dr. Reza Baqir is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal and Global Practice Leader of A&M’s Sovereign Advisory Services in Dubai. Dr. Baqir brings more than 25 years of experience in global sovereign work. He has advised numerous countries’ governments and central banks to promote macroeconomic stability and sustainable growth and manage economic crises. Prior to joining A&M, Dr. Baqir was the Governor of Pakistan’s central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan. There he negotiated a new IMF program in June 2019, successfully completed six subsequent reviews, and led the country’s financial response during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Baqir’s other reforms include the liberalization of Pakistan’s foreign exchange market from a fixed to a flexible regime, revision of the central bank law to strengthen its independence, and several digitization initiatives to promote efficiency and inclusion in the financial sector. Previously, Dr. Baqir spent 19 years with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and two years with the World Bank. He headed the IMF's Debt Policy Division, which oversees IMF’s work on sovereign debt related polices including sovereign debt restructuring, debt sustainability analyses, and related areas. He worked on debt restructurings in Greece, Jamaica, Ukraine and led the IMF delegation to the Paris Club for four years. In addition to sovereign debt work, Dr. Baqir started and headed the IMF’s office in Egypt as Senior Resident Representative and oversaw the successful implementation of the IMF’s largest loan in the Middle East. He was IMF Mission Chief for Romania and Bulgaria, Deputy Chief of the Emerging Markets Division, and IMF Resident Representative in the Philippines. Dr. Baqir earned a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in economics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School working in areas related to sovereign debt at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. His views on emerging markets’ economic challenges and sovereign debt have been covered frequently in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, and CNBC.