They were created to manage international financial crises, not to manage individual countries.

The Taiwan branch manages European, South American and Asian countries including Australia and New Zealand.

To widen the debate a bit, I'd say that there is nothing worng with a foreign manager, after all, many an Englishman, Scot or Irishman has managed both foreign clubs and countries, especially in the early days.

Australia, like the United States, is no longer a remote frontier society: it is one of the most electronically wired and bureaucratically managed countries in the world.

It develops, owns and manages shopping centres in France, Spain and Italy, as well as several other European countries.

Botswana is one of the most democratically managed countries in Africa.

As we move towards more harmonised European pension systems, the concern I hear from my constituents is whether they will have to bail out underfunded or badly managed State pension funds in other countries, just as we have had to bail out badly managed countries and their national debt.