FSB confirms Carney as next chair

Mario Draghi, the new European Central Bank president, on Friday morning confirmed Mark Carney as his successor as chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

In a press briefing in Cannes, where global leaders are gathered for a Group of 20 summit, Draghi revealed the news. The FSB is the facilitator for global financial regulation reform, making Carney's background in the industry very useful.

Carney, 46, was appointed to serve a seven-year term as governor of the Bank of Canada in February 2008.

Earlier in his career Carney spent 13 years at investment bank Goldman Sachs, where he spent time in the London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. Carney became deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. In November 2004, he was prised away from the central bank to take up a senior position in the finance department, which included being the Group of Seven deputy, but he returned to the Bank of Canada just over three years later.

Canada has been widely praised for its performance through the financial crisis. Under Carney's guidance the central bank acted swiftly to cut benchmark rates and gave a precise indication of how long rates would stay low. The US copied this unusual step in 2011 by repeatedly saying rates would stay low until at least 2013.

Carney has stocked the central bank with a team of young economists and has made effective use of special advisers. His latest appointee is David Beers, the global head of sovereign and international public finance ratings at Standard & Poor's, who downgraded the US credit rating this summer, in an historic move.