AIIB: Ten Years On

Monday, October 5, 2026

5:30-6:30 pm (Eastern)

Furman Hall 212 and on Zoom

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This event is co-sponsored by the APEC Study Center at Columbia University.

About the event:

As the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) launched in 2016, many wondered how this new China-led multilateral development bank (MDB) would fare.  Natalie Lichtenstein, AIIB’s founding lawyer takes a look at AIIB in context, surveying 100 years of MDB legal genealogy.  What does AIIB’s first decade tell us about the combination of heritage and innovation in AIIB’s 21st century charter?

About the speaker:

Natalie Lichtenstein was Inaugural General Counsel at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the principal drafter for the AIIB Charter. A former Assistant General Counsel at the World Bank, her 30-year legal career there spanned lending operations in Asia and senior positions in institutional governance. At US Treasury in the 1970s, she worked on development banks and normalization of US-China relations. She taught Chinese Law and Society at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) for many years and remains a Fellow at the China Research Center. She received an AB summa cum laude in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Professor José Enrique Alvarez will be the moderator.