By Andrew Flynn

With the poise and confidence one might expect from a big wheel on the world financial stage, Mahesh Uttamchandani expounds on global financial issues with authority from his home in a Washington, D.C. suburb of Northern Virginia.

Canadian-born Uttamchandani is a recognized expert in financial law, with dozens of published policy papers, speaking engagements, reports, and university lectures to his credit. He crosses paths frequently with the world’s power brokers from his office in Washington.

But Uttamchandani is not some high-flying CEO or trillion-dollar hedge fund manager. His vocation has taken him on a different path – with the World Bank, the organization whose mission is nothing less than the reduction of poverty on a global scale.

Right now, he’s got some literally global concerns about the effect of the pandemic on the less fortunate of the world.

As of 2017, the World Bank estimated that 689 million people lived in extreme poverty. Then came COVID-19.

“What I do know is that we’re already seeing more people around the world slipping back into extreme poverty as a result of this crisis -- with an increase of about 150 million by the end of this year -- that’s a staggering number that is probably erasing most of the gains in poverty reduction from the last 10 years,” says Uttamchandani.

“It’s not a question of will things get bad, in the sense that they are already bad for so many people,” Uttamchandani says on a video call.

“What we want to think about is what does a resilient and inclusive and frankly green recovery look like? Because this may also be a once-in-a-generation or a once-in-five-generation opportunity to fundamentally realign how we’re doing things.”

He admits this might not appear to have a direct correlation to insolvency, the area of law in which Uttamchandani received his initial experience, “but an insolvency system is one contributor to what a resilient economy will look like. We’re concerned a lot about this and it’s a bit of a cliché, but how do we build back better?”

Uttamchandani’s job title carries some serious weight – he is the Practice Manager for Financial Inclusion, Infrastructure & Access in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank Group.

His job description is equally daunting: under his management are a number of World Bank programs, including Payment & Market Infrastructures, Responsible Financial Access, Credit Infrastructure, the global Financial Inclusion Support Framework program and the global Financial Consumer Protection program.

“It’s our job to essentially guide developing countries on how to make their insolvency systems better so that they get more private investment, more entrepreneurship and cheaper credit, all of those things that we know a good insolvency system does.”

The obstacle to adopting an approach such as that of Canada and other developed countries of giving debtors a fresh start “has been there are still far too many countries that think of it in a criminal sense,” Uttamchandani says.

“There’s that Victorian concept of debtor’s prison that’s still alive and well in many countries in practical terms, because they see the failure to pay as a moral failing or as a criminal failing as opposed to just the natural offset of business risk.”

He manages a team of seven full-time insolvency lawyers but also manages 25 other experts working on financial technology and payment systems and consumer financial protection. At the heart of the team’s insolvency work is meeting with ministries of finance or industry or central banks to determine what it will take to make their regimes function effectively.

“The symptom of that lack of functioning is that credit costs too much, every company that gets into trouble gets liquidated and is worth less than the sum of its parts – you’ve got job losses, you’ve got a lack of entrepreneurship,” he says.

“In my case I might meet the minister or deputy minister and we’ll get broad marching orders. The critical thing is the officials in that country will put the team together that is tasked with developing this new insolvency framework.”

As if that isn’t enough, he is also the co-leader, with a colleague from the International Finance Corp. (IFC), of the Universal Financial Access 2020 initiative, which is dedicated to enabling adults who aren’t using any formal financial system in their daily lives. Aided by advances in financial technology, the initiative works to help them access accounts to store money, send and receive payments, and own the building blocks to manage their financial lives.

“We have 1.7 billion people around the world who are financially excluded, and this is absolutely impossible for many Canadians to wrap their heads around,” says Uttamchandani. “People who have no financial services whatsoever, no savings account, no credit card – nothing. We are working very hard to get these people included.”

But as he notes, enabling 1 billion people to access the financial system also comes with consequences. Among those are exposure to over-indebtedness and predatory behaviour from lenders. In some developing countries, when people get into financial distress there is no safety valve, no fresh start - once you become overindebted, you’re taken out of the economy forever.

“I think if you’re looking for a through line from insolvency to poverty reduction, you don’t have to look very hard.”

The road that brought Uttamchandani to the world financial stage began in a Toronto suburb that has incubated other worldwide notables such as The Barenaked Ladies, Mike Myers and The Weeknd. Like them, Uttamchandani has retained a very Canadian humility, crediting his own success on a global stage to those who helped him along the way.

“I think mentorship is such an important part of what we do – and especially for a brown kid from North Scarborough coming to Bay Street, I think it was hugely valuable,” says Uttamchandani.

“When I got to Bay Street - I know it’s changed in the last 20 years – but nobody looked like me. And I think that idea of not just representation, which I think is hugely important, but mentorship to grow people through the next generation is just so valuable and it’s something I take very seriously in my role now as a leader.”

A Politics graduate of Queens University, Uttamchandani pursued a law degree from York University’s prestigious Osgoode Hall. He clerked for such eminent jurists as the Honourable Justice James Farley, QC, and the Honourable Justice Robert Blair.

“I’ve been personally blessed with extraordinary mentors,” says Uttamchandani.

“I was coached by Peter Hogg, the pre-eminent constitutional scholar in Canada. He recommended to me that I clerk when I was done with law school.”

When he showed up for his first day of clerkship, there were 10 spots in criminal law, 10 in civil law and one in insolvency law.

“They said ‘Mahesh we drew your name literally out of a hat, you’ve got the commercial list,’” which wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for. But like many insolvency practitioners who enter the profession in a roundabout or unanticipated manner, Uttamchandani found himself “immediately hooked.”

“What I loved about that work is that everything ends up in court, as Justice Farley said, ‘in real time’, so there’s no time to do long discoveries and long negotiations and settle things on the courthouse steps – you’re in court the next day.”

At the end of his clerkship, Justice Blair recommend that he might be a great fit for the restructuring and litigation firm Thornton Grout Finnegan LLP (TGF) in Toronto.

“I went in to meet Bob Thornton and Jim Grout and it was a great fit,” Uttamchandani says. There he would gain further experience working alongside the eponymous partners at TGF and other prominent lawyers such as Grant Moffatt and D.J. Miller.

“They treated me like a grownup, they mentored me, they let me do things with clients, and let me be the lead on things. I’d be up on my feet in court all the time; it was just an amazing experience.”

Aside from all the technical expertise Uttamchandani gained while working at TGF, he notes that possibly the most important takeaway was that insolvency is, in essence, a relationship-based business.

“One of the things I learned from Bob (Thornton) very well is that fundamentally these human relationships are so critical, especially when you’re dealing with something so difficult. And that has served me so well throughout my career.”

One of the most important things he would learn was that the people of the insolvency and restructuring world are a different breed – one to which he quickly found he belongs.

“If you meet insolvency people anywhere, they tend to have a wicked sense of gallows humour and they tend to be highly energetic, motivated people and a little bit off, frankly,” Uttamchandani says with a laugh.

“We’re all kind of cowboys and cowgirls in our own way. And it was just amazing to me to be part of this community and I thought ‘this is actually what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.’”

As for his mentors, they express little surprise that Uttamchandani would find himself on the world stage of insolvency.

“I remember meeting Mahesh for the first time, and I was very impressed,” says Thornton.  

“He was smart, personable, and very funny. He also turned out to be a thoughtful, hard-working, and creative lawyer. We had an excellent professional and personal relationship. He was a genuine leader and an all-round team player.  He was always very aware of what was going on in the world around him and he always had a view, which he was eager to share.”

“One day I was in chambers with Justice Blair and several senior counsel,” recalls Grout. “When we were finished, Justice Blair asked me to stay behind. He told me that he had a clerk that we should hire - Mahesh. He told me that Mahesh had all of the skills, both as a lawyer and as a person, to be a great counsel.” After meeting with Justice Blair, they agreed and hired Uttamchandani. It was a choice they wouldn’t regret.

“It has been my experience that there are two types of people in leadership positions,” says Grout. “Those who strive for it and those who it comes to because people want them to lead. Mahesh is in the latter camp.  Wherever he goes, people congregate around him and seek his guidance. It has not gone to his head.”

“Working with Mahesh is an enriching experience,” Thornton adds. “His passion for his work combined with his organizational talents and creativity make him a force to be reckoned with. But he has such a warm and engaging personality and such a devilish sense of humour that it makes working with him an absolute delight.”

From Ontario-based insolvency lawyer to World Bank Practice Manager was a series of fairly simple, fortuitous steps, Uttamchandani says.

It all started with a call from a colleague in the government who suggested Uttamchandani might be interested in a position in London with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), of which Canada was a stakeholder. Like the World Bank, the EBRD was involved in lending to Eastern European countries to help build their economies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Uttamchandani applied and got the job, a two-year secondment. Fortunately, his wife Komal Mohindra, who is also a lawyer, had been asked by her firm to relocate to either New York or London. It seemed like a perfect fit.

“London is one of the great cities of the world,” says Uttamchandani. “We moved there; my daughter was born there – this whole universe opened up to me.”

It was no surprise to Thornton that Uttamchandani never returned. “He had such a world view that I was worried law wouldn’t be enough to hold his interest,” Thornton recalls. “When he was offered a two-year stint at the EBRD, I knew that was it for his Ontario law career.”

Uttamchandani had promised he would be returning to develop his career at TGF, so the two made a wager: they each placed a loonie on Thornton’s shelf. “If he came back, he could pick up the loonies. If he didn’t, then I might have lost a promising associate, but at least I was up a buck!”

In 2006, near the end of his placement with EBRD, Uttamchandani called and said he was coming back for the loonies. “A week prior he called me again,” says Thornton. “I knew something was up. As soon as he said, ‘Bob, it’s Mahesh,’ I responded with ‘So, does this mean I get the loonies?’ And sure enough, he was calling to say he had been offered a dream posting at the World Bank.”

By all accounts, Uttamchandani has taken his Canadian humility and drive for greater understanding and turned it into a powerful tool for good on the world stage. “I had a consulting contract with the Mahesh’s group at the World Bank,” says Grout.

“I met with Mahesh and his team in Washington to discuss the project. I was struck by two aspects of the meeting: the first was the high-level of analysis of insolvency issues. The second was the respect the team accorded Mahesh. He listened to everyone, enumerated the issues, set out the consensus on how to proceed and then set timelines.”

No profile of Uttamchandani would be complete without mentioning that, aside from being one of Canada’s highest profile insolvency exports, he was also a contestant on the legendary trivia game show Jeopardy! in March 2020. It is perhaps yet another point to underscore that Canadians can achieve great things – without the need to set aside their modesty or humble roots. In fact, Uttamchandani says, those things might be at the heart of why so many Canadians are highly valued on the world stage.

“I consider myself part of this wonderful expat Canadian community,” says Uttamchandani.

“I’ve met Canadians all over the world who are doing these fantastic things that are really not on the radar of people back home in Canada. I wish more Canadians knew that these kinds of things were open to them because we’re good at doing this.”