Two high-profile contenders from emerging economies aim to break the grip of the United States on running the World Bank.
Nominations close today for the job of president, with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister, and José Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister of Colombia, on the shortlist.
"With the changing shift in the global economy it's high time to have someone from an emerging economy heading an organisation aimed at promoting development," said Jarmo Kotilaine, the chief economist of National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia.
The US has held a monopoly on the position since 1944 when the bank was formed towards the end of the Second World War.
Among the US names in the frame this time around are Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary who has extensive economic credentials, and Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations. Barack Obama, the US president, is expected to nominate a candidate before the deadline.
Robert Zoellick, a former managing director of Goldman Sachs and the current World Bank president, plans to step down when his term expires at the end of June.
But support is growing in international circles for his replacement to come from outside the US.
"The precedent of having a US citizen as head of the World Bank and a European as head of the IMF is a convention born at a different time when there were no questions over their economic supremacy," said Mr Kotilaine.
That trend continued in June, when the French finance minister Christine Lagarde was elected as head of the IMF.
Now candidates from the emerging economies are challenging that with impressive credentials.
Ms Okonjo-Iweala already has World Bank experience. Last year, she left the organisation as managing director to become Nigeria's finance minister.
Mr Ocampo also has a wealth of experience. A former UN undersecretary for economy and social affairs, he has held the position of finance minister in Colombia.
"The fact that he comes from a developing country, to which he has made such a major contribution, should count in his favour," wrote Stephany Griffith-Jones, a financial markets analyst at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University in a blog.
But questions remain about whether emerging economies are sufficiently unified to rally around one candidate. China and Brazil declined to lend their support to the bid by Mexico's central bank chief, Agustín Carstens, to land the IMF's top job last year.
However, all of the World Bank's 187-member nations have committed to a merit-based process to select Mr Zoellick's successor.
After nominations are submitted to the 25-member World Bank board, a decision on the new president will be made next month.
Voting power is linked to the amount of money each country pays into the bank's funds. The US and Europe control about half of votes on the board.
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