Person:
Gregory, Neil

Investment Operations, International Finance Corporation
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Fields of Specialization
private sector development; private investment; South Asia
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0000-0002-5524-6089
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Investment Operations, International Finance Corporation
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Neil Gregory is Chief Strategy Officer for Investment Operations at the IFC. He was previously Chief of Strategy and Operations for the World Bank Group’s Financial and Private Sector Development Network, which produces global benchmarking products which include Doing Business. Before that he was a Manager in IFC’s South Asia Department with responsibility for investment strategy and advisory services. Earlier in his career, he was Adviser to the UK Executive Director of the IMF and World Bank Group and an Economic Adviser to the UK government. He holds economics degrees from Cambridge and Oxford and an MBA from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. Neil has published and taught on Foreign Direct Investment in developing countries, private sector development in China and India, benchmarking and the role of Development Finance Institutions. He has extensive work experience in South Asia, China, Ghana, the Caribbean and other developing countries. A UK national, he now lives in Washington DC.

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Private Enterprise after the Pandemic: A Review of Alternative Scenarios
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-18) Yusuf, Shahid; Gregory, Neil
    The Coronavirus(COVID-19) pandemic has had strong adverse impacts on the private sector in low- and middle-income countries. The future course of the pandemic remains highly uncertain, so consideration of alternative scenarios may be more helpful in assessing investment opportunities and designing policy responses. Based on private sector responses to the pandemic shock, and lessons learned from previous exogeneous shocks, this paper outlines two alternative scenarios for private enterprise during the recovery phase. The scenarios consider a stronger as well as a weaker global economic recovery, and both of these are based on the information available as of end-June 2021. Thus, the scenarios do not discuss developments that have taken place since June 30, which include the emergence of the Delta variant of Coronavirus (COVID-19), and the evolution of vaccine deployment around the world.
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    Small and Medium Enterprises in the Pandemic: Impact, Responses and the Role of Development Finance
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09) Adian, Ikmal; Doumbia, Djeneba; Gregory, Neil; Ragoussis, Alexandros; Reddy, Aarti; Timmis, Jonathan
    This study highlights how COVID-19 has affected small and medium enterprises, drawing on newly released World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 13 countries. The study shows that firms of all sizes are severely affected in multiple dimensions; however, firm size matters for the intensity of the different channels of transmission and firms' responses. Small and medium enterprise sales shrink by more and their cash drains faster than large firms in the same sector and country. Among them, faster growing firms experience the demand shock somewhat less severely, but they are more exposed to international trade disruption, supply, and finance shocks. Yet, a range of firm responses to the downturn seem to be out of reach. Fewer small and medium-size enterprises, for example, start remote work, leaving their workers exposed to health risks. To make it through the pandemic, the majority of smaller firms do not turn to banks for loans; they need grants. Although development finance is not enough to fill the financing gap, development finance institutions are relevant -- in investment mobilization, demonstration, and know-how -- as economies move toward recovery and rebuilding. Delivering these requires rapid efforts to build partnerships and gather information in places where development finance has been limited in the past.
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    Pioneering Firms in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Why and How Development Finance Institutions Should Support Them
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) Collier, Paul; Gregory, Neil; Ragoussis, Alexandros
    The role of 'first movers' in fragile states is critical: they grow and diversify markets in ways that no other firms do, generating disproportionate impact in terms of development and stability. But pioneer firms are rare in fragile states. This study documents their profile, their challenges, and the barriers that prevent them from realizing their potential. The study also explores the rationale for development finance institutions to support them, and proposes new ways to offset costs, risks, and the "unknown unknowns" that generate radical uncertainty. Through a process of social learning and resetting negative self-fulfilling investor narratives, development finance institutions can help pioneering firms shift the growth trajectory of fragile and conflict-affected states.
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    Blending Public and Private Finance: What Lessons Can Be Learned from IFC’s Experience?
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2016-04) Sierra-Escalante, Kruskaia; Gregory, Neil
    Following international agreement on the sustainable development goals, governments are now confronting the critical issue of funding the enormous investments - especially in infrastructure - required to meet those goals. Yet governments clearly lack the fiscal space to finance all the investments, as well as the skills needed to design and manage them. So the focus is on how to crowd in private investment and private management. Since not enough private investment is flowing today, donor governments are exploring how to blend public aid money with private finance to make aid spending go further and crowd in more private investment.
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    New Industries from New Places : The Emergence of the Software and Hardware Industries in China and India
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Stanford University Press, 2009) Gregory, Neil; Tenev, Stoyan
    China and India have grown rapidly in importance in the global economy over the past two decades the same period in which hardware and software have become important tradable products in the global economy. China has reached global scale in the hardware industry but not in software; India has achieved the reverse. These recent developments offer new insights into the ways in which new industries can take root and flourish within the broader context of developing economies. This progress has attracted widespread comment, most of it anecdotal or based on partial explanations of industrial growth. This study seeks to provide a fuller explanation based on an empirical analysis of the macro and micro underpinnings of these contrasting growth stories. In doing so, the study sheds a broader light on the economic development paths that China and India have taken since 1990, and also on the process by which developing economies can enter and succeed in new markets.
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    The Road to 2020: Scenarios for a World in Crisis
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012) Djankov, Simeon; Gregory, Neil; Klein, Michael; Martin, Facundo
    The paper is based on a scenario workshop held on January 20, 2009, where leading financial and private sector development experts from IFC, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank discussed the unfolding crisis. This paper is a product of the staff of the Financial and Private Sector Development Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group. The scenarios described in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank Group, its Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The scenarios described serve as the basis of a planning exercise and are not to be interpreted as forecasts or projections on the part of the World Bank Group or the authors of this paper. The purpose of this paper is to sketch scenarios taking into account the information currently at hand. In this way, scenarios can provide decision makers with alternative views of the future. Decision makers can test their strategies against the different ways in which the future might play out. Scenarios provide a framework for debate, leading to better policy making and strategies. They are especially useful in situations where major global changes are under way but there is huge uncertainty over what may happen. Staffs of the World Bank Group are providing these scenarios to help governments and organizations prepare for an uncertain future. Being well prepared and open to thinking about different outcomes is much better than continually being behind the curve and having to chase events.