People: Fed governor gets new term; IMF’s Poul Thomsen to retire

US: Michelle Bowman has been reappointed for a second term as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

She was initially appointed in November 2018 to serve out the remainder of her predecessor’s term, which ran until January 31 this year. She has now been reappointed to serve a further 14-year term.

As governor, Bowman is charged with overseeing consumer and community affairs, as well as sitting on committees for supervision and regulation, and “Federal Reserve Bank affairs”.

Before joining the Fed, Bowman was state bank commissioner of Kansas, from January 2017 to November 2018, and before that was vice-president of Farmers & Drovers Bank in Kansas.

IMF: Veteran International Monetary Fund official Poul Thomsen is to retire at the end of July from his position as head of the European department.

Thomsen, a Danish citizen, has spent 37 years at the fund. He provided advice and guidance to the former Soviet nations that transitioned to market-based economies after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more recently was a pivotal figure in the negotiations for the Greek bailouts during the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

“Poul is known as a tough-minded and principled negotiator, and he has always had the long-term wellbeing of the people of the member countries we serve squarely as the focus of his efforts,” said IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva.

Also at the IMF, Jennifer Lester, a national of Jamaica, has been appointed director of corporate services and facilities. She joined the department as deputy director in 2016 and was previously assistant general counsel in charge of the administrative law unit in the fund’s legal department.

Europe: The European Central Bank has appointed Roland Straub as counsellor to president Christine Lagarde. Straub had also been counsellor to the previous president, Mario Draghi.

Before becoming counsellor to Draghi in 2017, he was counsellor to executive board member Benoît Cœuré. He previously worked in the directorates-general for research, and international and European relations. He has been at the ECB for 13 years.

UK: The Bank of England has reshuffled the portfolios of two deputy governors, handing responsibility for resolution from Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor for financial stability, to Dave Ramsden, deputy governor for markets and banking.

The reallocation of responsibilities reflects Cunliffe’s new role as chair of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, and his “increasing involvement in cross-border payment and central bank digital currency issues”, the BoE said.

Ramsden will continue to report to the governor, who retains overall responsibility for resolution.

Slovakia: Michal Horváth took up his role as the National Bank of Slovakia’s (NBS) new chief economist on February 1. He will also be director of the central bank’s economic and monetary analysis department.

Horváth is an academic economist, previously a lecturer at the University of York and a research fellow at the University of Oxford. He has also worked for ING as a research assistant, and served as an adviser to the Slovakian government.

In a statement, Horváth said the chief economist role appealed to him as the NBS is looking to become an “open and modern” central bank. He said it would be his goal to promote understanding in Slovakia of the “seemingly remote” events taking place at the ECB in Frankfurt, while remaining receptive to the views of the Slovakian public.