A week after becoming the only woman in history to take charge at the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde notched another milestone: she nominated Zhu Min, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, as a deputy. Zhu is the first Chinese deputy managing director since the fund’s founding in 1945.

Zhu’s nomination is one way in which Lagarde, who has worked and lived in France and the U.S. throughout her career, is extending her influence beyond the West, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance. Her supporters say her background is a plus.

“A European head of the IMF may be able to let the Europeans accept that it is time for the institution to take distance from Europe,” says Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economist at the Bruegel research group in Brussels.

Lagarde, who took over on July 5, has a history of working to unify disparate interests. During her first weeks as managing director, with European governments haggling over another Greek bailout -- this one 159 billion euros ($222 billion) -- she made it clear that they needed to act.
Things Have to Happen

In a July 26 address at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, she pressed European nations to implement a Greek rescue package they had formed the previous week. And she urged....