The prestigious business school INSEAD has appointed renowned Bulgarian economist Ilian Mihov as its dean.

The news was first reported by Financial Times and has been confirmed by INSEAD in an official announcement on its website.

The appointment is effective October 1.

As a signal of the global scale of the school, Professor Mihov will be the first INSEAD Dean to be based in Asia, with frequent travel around the world to engage the entire global INSEAD community, the announcement further reads.

This is also the first time when an internal faculty member has been appointed as INSEAD dean since Gabriel Hawawini in 2000.

Professor Ilian Mihov was appointed Interim Dean of INSEAD on March 1, 2013.

With campuses in Europe (Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore) and Abu Dhabi, INSEAD is the only global business school with a multiple campus structure.

In mid-January 2010, Mihov was nominated by then Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov to become a new Bulgarian Deputy PM without portfolio in his government of Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB, who would coordinate EU funds absorption, and would help Bulgaria adopt the euro.

His nomination came to replace World Bank VP Kristalina Georgieva who was supposed to join the Borisov government in 2010 but instead became Bulgaria's new EU Commissioner.

At the end of January 2010, Mihov announced he was not going to join the Bulgarian government for the time being.

He explained this was his personal decision that resulted largely from political speculations about how his joining the cabinet would affect the currency peg, and respectively, the economic stability in Bulgaria.