Mark Carney

Mark Carney
Carney at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, 2013
Governor of the Bank of England
Incumbent
Assumed office July 1, 2013
Preceded by	Mervyn King
Governor of the Bank of Canada
In office February 1, 2008 – June 3, 2013
Preceded by	David Dodge
Succeeded by	Stephen Poloz
Chairman of the Financial Stability Board
Incumbent
Assumed office November 4, 2011
Preceded by	Mario Draghi
Personal details
Born	Mark Joseph Carney (1965-03-16) March 16, 1965 Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada
Spouse(s)	Diana Fox
Children	4
Alma mater	Harvard University St Peter's College, Oxford Nuffield College, Oxford

	Mark Carney's voice from the BBC radio programme Today, 8 August 2013[1]
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Mark Joseph Carney (born March 16, 1965) is the current Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the G20's Financial Stability Board.^[2] He was previously the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and began his career at Goldman Sachs and the Canadian Department of Finance. Carney has been credited with shielding Canada from the worst effects of the late-2000s financial crisis, and has earned recognition by the Financial Times and Time magazine as a top figure in the financial world.

Early life

Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. His father Bob was a high school principal there, and later a professor of education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, where the family moved when Carney was six years old. Carney has three siblings — older brother Sean, younger brother Brian and sister Brenda. His mother Verlie was an elementary school teacher before having children. Carney and his brothers all attended St. Francis Xavier High School in Edmonton, Alberta before studying at Harvard University.^[3]

Carney completed a bachelor's degree in economics at Harvard in 1988. He later attended St Peter's College, Oxford where he received an MPhil in economics in 1993, and Nuffield College, Oxford where he received a DPhil in economics in 1995 for thesis titled The dynamic advantage of competition.^[4]

Career

Goldman Sachs

Carney spent thirteen years with Goldman Sachs in its London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included co-head of sovereign risk; executive director, emerging debt capital markets; and managing director, investment banking. He worked on South Africa's post-apartheid venture into international bond markets, and was involved in Goldman's work with the 1998 Russian financial crisis.^[3]

Department of Finance

From November 2004 to October 2007, Carney was senior associate deputy minister and G7 deputy at the Canadian Department of Finance. He served under Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale and Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty. During this time Carney oversaw the government's controversial plan to tax income trusts at source.^[5]

Carney was also the "point man" in the government's profitable sale of its 19-percent stake in Petro-Canada.^[6][7]

Bank of Canada

Deputy governor, 2003–2004

Carney first joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor on August 5, 2003.^[8] About a year later he was seconded to the federal Department of Finance as senior associate deputy minister of finance, effective November 15, 2004.^[9]

Governor, February 2008–June 2013

Carney returned to the Bank in November 2007 after his appointment as Governor, and served as advisor to retiring Governor David Dodge before formally assuming Dodge's job on February 1, 2008.^[10] Carney was selected over Paul Jenkins, the Senior Deputy Governor, who had been considered the front-runner to succeed Dodge.^[11] Carney took on this role during the depths of the recent global financial crisis. At the time of his appointment, Carney was the youngest central bank governor among the G8 and G20 groups of nations.^[12]

The financial crisis

Mark Carney at the 2010 World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

Carney's actions as the Bank of Canada's governor are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the financial crisis that began in 2007.^[13][14]

The epoch-making feature of his tenure as governor remains the decision to cut the overnight rate by 50 basis points in March 2008, only one month after his appointment. While the European Central Bank delivered a rate increase in July 2008, Carney anticipated the leveraged-loan crisis would trigger global contagion. When policy rates in Canada hit the effective lower-bound, the central bank combated the crisis with the nonstandard monetary tool: the "conditional commitment" in April 2009 to hold the policy rate for at least one year, in a boost to domestic credit conditions and market confidence. Output and employment began to recover from mid-2009, in part thanks to monetary stimulus.^[15] The Canadian economy outperformed those of its G7 peers during the crisis, and Canada was the first G7 nation to have both its GDP and employment recover to pre-crisis levels.

The Bank's decision to provide substantial additional liquidity to the Canadian financial system,^[16] and its unusual step of announcing a commitment to keep interest rates at their lowest possible level for one year,^[17] appear to have been significant contributors to Canada's weathering of the crisis.^[18]

Canada's risk-averse fiscal and regulatory environment is also cited as a factor. In 2009 a Newsweek columnist wrote, "Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize."^[19]

Carney earned various accolades for his leadership during the financial crisis. He was named one of the Financial Times' "Fifty who will frame the way forward",^[20] and of Time magazine's "2010 Time 100".^[21] In May 2011, Reader's Digest magazine named him "Editor's Choice for Most Trusted Canadian".^[22]

In October 2012, Carney was named "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012" by the editors of Euromoney magazine.^[23]

International organization memberships

On November 4, 2011, Carney was named chairman of the Basel-based Financial Stability Board. In a statement, Carney credited his appointment to "the strong reputation of Canada's financial system and the leading role that Canada has played in helping to develop many of the most important international reforms". The three-year term is a part-time commitment, allowing Carney to complete his term at the Bank of Canada. While there has been no indication of his priorities as chairman, on the day of his appointment the Board published a list of 29 banks that were considered sufficiently large as to pose a risk to the global economy should they fail.^[24][25] At his first press conference as Chair of the FSB in January 2012, Carney laid out his key priorities for the Board.^[26]

Carney was chairman of the Bank for International Settlements' Committee on the Global Financial System from July 2010 until January 2012.^[27] Carney is also a member of the Group of Thirty, an international body of leading financiers and academics, and of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.^[28][29] Carney attended the annual meetings of the Bilderberg Group in 2011 and 2012.^[30][31]

Governor of the Bank of England

On November 26, 2012, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced the appointment of Carney as the next Governor of the Bank of England. Carney succeed Sir Mervyn King on July 1, 2013.^[32] He is the first non-Briton to be appointed to the role since the Bank was established in 1694. The Bank of England will be given additional powers starting in 2013, such as the ability to set bank capital requirements.^[33]

Prior to taking up the post, Carney has already indicated disagreement with the Bank of England's Executive Director of Financial Stability Andy Haldane, specifically on leverage ratios and on bank break-ups. He has been quoted as saying Haldane does not have a "proper understanding of the facts" on bank regulation.^[34]

Though the term is officially eight years, Carney has said that he intends to stand down after five. He is likely to be offered a total pay package of about £624,000 ($990,000) per year, approximately £100,000 ($160,000) more per year than his predecessor.^[32]

Personal life

Carney met his wife, Diana Fox, a British economist specializing in developing nations, while at the University of Oxford.^[22] She is said to be active in various environment and social justice causes.^[35] The couple married while he was finishing his doctoral thesis in the mid-1990s. They have four daughters and lived in the Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood of Ottawa before moving to London in 2013.^[3]

During his Harvard years, Carney was back-up goalie for the school's ice hockey team.^[36][37] Carney continued playing hockey with the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club while studying at the University of Oxford.^[38]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mark Carney.

v t e The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee
	Governor: Mark Carney (July 2013 – present)
	July 2013 – October 2013:	Carney | Bean | Tucker | Dale | Fisher | Miles | McCafferty | Weale | Broadbent
	November 2013 – present:	Carney | Bean | Cunliffe | Dale | Fisher | Miles | McCafferty | Weale | Broadbent

v t e Governors of the Bank of Canada Towers Coyne Rasminsky Bouey Crow Thiessen Dodge Carney Poloz