Lagarde IMF candidacy 'completely acceptable': Putin

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Friday that French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde's candidacy to head the International Monetary Fund was "very serious".

"The candidacy of the French Finance Minister is ... of course completely acceptable," Putin told reporters. "This should be decided at another place and on another level, but the French candidacy is very serious."

Putin's comment was the strongest indication to date that Russia would agree to Lagarde's candidacy despite concerns among large emerging economies that Europe should not have a lock on running the Fund.

Russia, together with other countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States, had pushed Kazakh central bank chief Grigory Marchenko as a replacement for Dominique Strauss-Kahn but the idea has failed to gain traction.