Chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority Andrew Bailey speaks at the Bank of England in London on Feb. 25, 2019.POOL New/Reuters
Former Bank of England deputy governor Andrew Bailey, one of the City of London’s most experienced financial regulators, is set to be named as the new governor of the British central bank, a person familiar with the process said.
Bailey, 60, worked for 30 years at the BOE before moving in 2016 to his current job as chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority which is charged with cracking down on misconduct in the finance industry.
The Financial Times, which reported earlier on Thursday that Bailey would get the top job at the BOE, said finance minister Sajid Javid was expected to announce the choice of who will replace Mark Carney as the BoE’s new governor on Friday.
A spokesman for Britain’s finance ministry declined to comment.
Britain has delayed the appointment of a new BOE governor since last year with the country focused on Brexit – the impact of which remains a big challenge for the central bank – and on an election won by Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week.
Carney, a Canadian, is due to stand down on Jan. 31.
Other names lined with the jobs have included BOE deputy governor, Minouche Shafik, Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander U.K., and former Federal Reserve policy maker Kevin Warsh.
Gerard Lyons, who was economic adviser to Johnson while London mayor, was considered to have fallen short of the requirements of the job but still had an outside chance of getting it, the FT said earlier on Thursday.
Lyons is well known for his pro-Brexit views which are unusual among professional economists.
Johnson rejected Shafik because of her critical views on Brexit, the FT said.
Bailey was deeply involved in shoring up the British banking system during the global financial crisis while at the BOE, and he remains a familiar face to the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world.
Other roles included helping the BOE to contain the fallout from the collapse of Barings in the late 1980s and participating in the introduction of a new currency in war-torn Iraq in 2003. He has also served as the BoE’s chief cashier.
In his current job at the FCA, Bailey has been criticized for not publishing in full a report into alleged misconduct by bank RBS. Bailey cited privacy restrictions.
His chances of getting the BOE job were seen to have been further dented after the demise of the Woodford equity fund which was popular with retail investors. Bailey has said the FCA was limited in what it could do by European Union rules.
The FT said current BOE deputy governors Ben Broadbent and Jon Cunliffe were still hopeful they might get the top job.