The final chance for more than half a decade to reshape the European Central Bank’s inner sanctum of policy making will soon spark a tussle for influence between the region’s smaller countries.
The vacancy on the six-person executive board that the departure of Luxemburg’s Yves Mersch will create in December will be the last one available until 2026. The contest to fill it will end a round of appointments that included Christine Lagarde’s groundbreaking elevation as the ECB’s first female chief.
With citizens of all four of the region’s biggest economies already on the board, Mr Mersch’s succession offers a rare prize to the rest. That could provide a historic opening for governments in the bloc’s East from Slovenia to Estonia to win their first ever seat, or for others from the Netherlands to Finland to clinch a second shot.
While key decisions are officially taken by 25 members of its Governing Council, it’s up to the president and the executive board in Frankfurt to set the policy agenda.
It's clear that the appointment will have to come from a small country
Board members serve in a personal capacity and should be “persons of recognised standing and professional experience in monetary or banking matters", according to the ECB statute. Specific strengths for this job might include expertise in supervision to replace Mr Mersch as vice chair of the institution’s watchdog for lenders, as well as being female and knowing about green finance to aid Ms Lagarde’s priorities on diversity and the environment.
“It’s clear that the appointment will have to come from a small country,” said Nicolas Veron, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “It’s potentially very important for Ms Lagarde, because as the situation with Covid showed, the monetary policy side and supervision need to work and communicate closely.”
Euro-zone finance ministers will make the choice in coming months, and behind-the-scenes jostling has already started. Here are some names of possible candidates emerging early on in the race to join Ms Lagarde’s top team, based on conversations with officials and observers with knowledge of the process.
The Netherlands provided the ECB’s first president, Wim Duisenberg, but hasn’t had an executive board member since he left 15 years ago: a long enough gap perhaps to allow a claim for another turn.
One potential candidate could be Frank Elderson, 50, who already sits on the board of the ECB’s watchdog for lenders in his role running banking supervision at the Dutch central bank. He is also chairman of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, a group of 66 mostly European institutions aiming to address climate change.
Another possibility is Joanne Kellermann, 59, who was the first female board member at the Netherlands central bank, where she monitored banks during the global financial crisis. She then served at the Single Resolution Board, responsible for winding up lenders in Germany and Italy. She is currently the chairwoman of a Dutch pension fund.
Any candidate might encounter resistance from countries unimpressed by the Netherlands’ role as the region’s chief foot-dragger in creating its new coronavirus-inspired recovery fund. Winning a board seat could also hurt the chances of central-bank governor Klaas Knot to replace Ms Lagarde when her term ends in 2027.
No Eastern European citizen has yet served on the ECB’s board, so whatever the outcome, the appointment process has symbolic significance in that part of the region.
One contender there could be Bostjan Jazbec, 50, who led Slovenia’s central bank but quit early amid controversy over a decision to wipe out investors in a €3.2 billion ($3.8bn/Dh13.8bn) rescue of failing lenders. As an ex-governor from a country that suffered a banking crisis, he could bring expertise in both monetary policy and supervision. Since 2018, he has been at the Brussels-based SRB, where he oversees planning for winding up banks.
Alternatively, Peter Kazimir, 52, is a former Slovak finance minister who has led his country’s central bank for just over a year. That makes him a relative monetary novice, though he can offer useful experience of the euro-zone debt crisis from his previous role.
Along with the rest of Eastern Europe, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have never had an ECB Board seat. Their best chance of changing that could be Ardo Hansson, 62, who ran Estonia’s central bank until last year.
A Chicago-born son of Estonian immigrants with a doctorate from Harvard, he was formerly the World Bank’s lead economist for China. If Mr Hansson pursues the job, he could carry the support of all three Baltic countries, though a money-laundering scandal that hit Estonia in his final year as governor might cast a shadow over his potential candidacy.
Like the Netherlands, Finland also had a board member at the birth of the euro, but not since 2003. For Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn, 58, clinching a board seat might be third-time lucky after he lost out to Ms Lagarde for the ECB’s top job, and then failed to get her previous role leading the International Monetary Fund.
The former European Union Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs could be happy with the influence of his current job however: he was the first ECB policy maker to call for the strategy review, which Ms Lagarde then established this year.
The years Ramadan fell in May
SM Town Live is on Friday, April 6 at Autism Rocks Arena, Dubai. Tickets are Dh375 at www.platinumlist.net
'Laal Kaptaan'
Director: Navdeep Singh
Stars: Saif Ali Khan, Manav Vij, Deepak Dobriyal, Zoya Hussain
Rating: 2/5
Tips for SMEs to cope
- Adapt your business model. Make changes that are future-proof to the new normal
- Make sure you have an online presence
- Open communication with suppliers, especially if they are international. Look for local suppliers to avoid delivery delays
- Open communication with customers to see how they are coping and be flexible about extending terms, etc
Courtesy: Craig Moore, founder and CEO of Beehive, which provides term finance and working capital finance to SMEs. Only SMEs that have been trading for two years are eligible for funding from Beehive.
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Hamilton’s 2017
Australia - 2nd; China - 1st; Bahrain - 2nd; Russia - 4th; Spain - 1st; Monaco - 7th; Canada - 1st; Azerbaijan - 5th; Austria - 4th; Britain - 1st; Hungary - 4th; Belgium - 1st; Italy - 1st; Singapore - 1st; Malaysia - 2nd; Japan - 1st; United States - 1st; Mexico - 9th
Cheeseburger%20ingredients
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The team
Photographer: Mateusz Stefanowski at Art Factory
Videographer: Jear Valasquez
Fashion director: Sarah Maisey
Make-up: Gulum Erzincan at Art Factory
Model: Randa at Art Factory Videographer’s assistant: Zanong Magat
Photographer’s assistant: Sophia Shlykova
With thanks to Jubail Mangrove Park, Jubail Island, Abu Dhabi
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Press
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
Walls
Louis Tomlinson
3 out of 5 stars
(Syco Music/Arista Records)
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
- Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
- Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESmartCrowd%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2018%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESiddiq%20Farid%20and%20Musfique%20Ahmed%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDubai%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFinTech%20%2F%20PropTech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInitial%20investment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%24650%2C000%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2035%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESeries%20A%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EVarious%20institutional%20investors%20and%20notable%20angel%20investors%20(500%20MENA%2C%20Shurooq%2C%20Mada%2C%20Seedstar%2C%20Tricap)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Infiniti QX80 specs
Engine: twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6
Power: 450hp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: From Dh450,000, Autograph model from Dh510,000
Available: Now
Results
Ashraf Ghani 50.64 per cent
Abdullah Abdullah 39.52 per cent
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar 3.85 per cent
Rahmatullah Nabil 1.8 per cent
Jewel of the Expo 2020
252 projectors installed on Al Wasl dome
13.6km of steel used in the structure that makes it equal in length to 16 Burj Khalifas
550 tonnes of moulded steel were raised last year to cap the dome
724,000 cubic metres is the space it encloses
Stands taller than the leaning tower of Pisa
Steel trellis dome is one of the largest single structures on site
The size of 16 tennis courts and weighs as much as 500 elephants
Al Wasl means connection in Arabic
World’s largest 360-degree projection surface
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
