Total overhaul of Carney’s top level executives
MORE than a dozen top staff at the Bank of England will be reshuffled into new or radically changed jobs this summer, the Bank said yesterday, with around 10 more senior positions still to be filled.
A new deputy governor has been appointed for markets and banking, a position which did not exist previously and comes with a seat on the monetary policy committee (MPC).
The IMF’s Nemat Shafik is taking the role, taking Paul Fisher’s MPC seat.
He moves from being executive director for markets to deputy head of the prudential regulation authority (PRA).
Meanwhile chief economist Spencer Dale is swapping jobs with financial stability boss Andy Haldane.
Haldane will join the MPC and Dale the financial policy committee (FPC).
Retiring deputy governor for monetary policy Charlie Bean will be replaced by external MPC member and Goldman Sachs alumnus Ben Broadbent. Other key moves include top PRA regulator Lyndon Nelson becoming executive director for supervision of UK deposit takers, and Chris Salmon, executive director of banking services, becoming markets’ executive director.
Megan Butler will become executive director for international banks supervision, while David Rule will become executive director for prudential policy.
Rule’s position is a key one in the new structure, as he reports up to two different deputy governors – Andrew Bailey, the head of the PRA, and Sir John Cunliffe who heads financial stability.
That is intended to force Rule and his unit to recognise the implications of his actions for both the individual banks he works with, and the banking system as a whole.
Meanwhile Sir David Lees is leaving the court of the Bank to be replaced by corporate grandee Anthony Habgood who will oversee governance and strategy from the Bank’s board, as well as monitoring the organisation’s progress.
PROFILE: THE BANK’S NEW BOSS OF QE
Dr Nemat Shafik, known as Minouche, is taking on the unenviable task of deciding how and when to start unwinding the Bank of England’s £325bn quantitative easing programme.
Shafik has never set monetary policy before, but has a wealth of finance experience. She has spent three years as deputy managing director at the IMF, with a focus on the turmoil within the Eurozone as well as the Middle East.
She also became the youngest ever vice president at the World Bank in 1989, and until 2011 was at the Department for International Development.
When asked last year what makes a good politician, she said they “know when to use political windows of opportunity to make changes, often early in their governance, and know how to use the political process to build a consensus for reform and communicate with the public to get support. It’s as much art as science.”
Shafik graduated from high school in Alexandria in Egypt, where she was born, though some of her childhood was spent in the United States following Egypt’s nationalisations in the 1960s. She holds economics degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the London School of Economics and St Antony’s College, Oxford.
As well as the question of ending QE, Shafik will also lead a review of the Bank’s “market intelligence function”, in the hope that Threadneedle Street will in future spot risks on the horizon.
Shafik, along with the other new Bank appointees, has been booked in to face the Treasury Select Committee before she takes up her post in August.
By Marion Dakers
NEW JOBS AT THE BANK
APPOINTMENTS
■ IMF’s Nemat Shafik will become deputy governor for markets and banking.
■ Markets boss Paul Fisher is leaving the MPC to become number two at the PRA.
■ Spencer Dale moves from the MPC to the FPC as exec director for financial stability.
■ Andy Haldane becomes chief economist for the Bank and joins the MPC.
■ Banking services head Chris Salmon becomes exec director for markets.
■ Lyndon Nelson has been appointed exec director for supervision of UK deposit takers.
VACANCIES
■ Megan Butler becomes executive director for international banks supervision.
■ David Rule is the new executive director for prudential policy.
■ As-yet unfilled jobs include director of banking services, which will report to Shafik.
■ The new position as director of financial market infrastructure supervision will be recruited in the coming months.
■ The court of the Bank needs to hire a director for independent evaluation, monitoring the rest of the Bank.
■ An insurance policy director under the PRA is also needed.
■ An international director is needed, who will report jointly to Shafik and Cunliffe.
■ The monetary policy unit is being beefed up with a new director.
■ And the PRA is looking for directors for its systemic and non-systemic bank units.