Europe’s next top banking watchdog might be Portuguese
The Single Supervisory Mechanism is the ECB's supervisory arm. Nouy's successor might be Portugal's, Elisa Ferreira, which could be a good choice for Southern Europe.
Many EU top jobs become available next year: the European Commission’s and the ECB’s presidency, for instance, are amongst those that will be vacant in 2019. According to Bloomberg, the applications for leading the ECB’s supervisory body (SSM) will close this Friday.
Bloomberg sources confirmed that the ECB will “prefer to choose woman” but could not name anyone as the “process is confidential until a shortlist is published”. To be a woman seems to be a very important pre-requisite, as the ECB focuses greatly on gender equality matters.
According to the news source, “Ferreira joined the board of Portugal’s central bank in 2016 and became vice governor last year.”
The article also pointed out that “Ferreira could be a palatable candidate for southern European countries concerned that the ECB might endanger their banks by pushing too quickly to clean up bad loans. That could make her difficult to accept for the hawks though, and while she’s already on the ECB’s supervisory board, she doesn’t have as much experience as other potential candidates. Another count against her is that Portugal holds a powerful EU post with Mario Centeno heading the group of euro-area finance ministers.”
