Merrill Lynch & Co.'s top executive in Japan, Izumi Kobayashi, is in advanced talks with the World Bank to head its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, sources said.

The hiring process for the Washington-based post is in the final stages and Kobayashi is the leading candidate, said a source briefed on the matter who declined to be identified because the selection hasn't been voted on by the World Bank board. Kobayashi, 49, joined Merrill in Tokyo in 1985 and became president of Merrill Lynch Japan Securities in 2001.

Kobayashi would be the latest Japanese executive to head MIGA, set up in 1988 to provide insurance against the political risks — wars, arbitrary currency controls, expropriation — of investing in poor countries. She's the only woman on a 16-member board overseeing the 1,400-member Keizai Doyukai, Japan's oldest association of executives.

Tsukasa Noda, a Merrill spokesman in Japan, said he couldn't comment, as did Cynthia Case, a spokeswoman for the World Bank.

MIGA's most recent head, Yukiko Omura, a former executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., stepped down in June. Since then, the agency's chief operating officer, James Bond, has served as acting head.

Other Japanese executives who have led the agency include Yoshio Terasawa, a former vice president of Nomura Securities Co., and Motomichi Ikawa, a former official in the Finance Ministry.

Kobayashi couldn't be reached for comment as she was out of her office.

Kobayashi's departure would add to the ranks of foreign executives Chief Executive Officer John Thain has had to replace since taking over Merrill in December.