ECB’s empty chairs leaves Draghi in pre-Brexit bind
The room at the top of the European Central Bank is currently vacant — causing something of an embarrassment that smacks of poor governance
Frankfurt — Mario Draghi’s inbox for personnel decisions at the European Central Bank (ECB) is looking rather full. The ECB president hasn’t picked a new second-in-command for his institution’s supervision arm, meaning the position will be vacant on Monday when Sabine Lautenschläger’s stint ends. There’s no indication of a plan to replace her, no evidence of progress in filling two seats on the board that have been empty since 2017, nor the one that will open up when Ignazio Angeloni leaves next month. The vacuum at the helm of the single supervisory mechanism (SSM) means the watchdog of the region’s biggest banks may wake up on Brexit day led solely by Andrea Enria, who has been in his job for only a month, and one other ECB official. “I had hoped that the ECB would run a lot more smoothly,” said Andreas Freytag, a professor of economics and chair for economic policy at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. “With Brexit, you’d want to see more continuity in supervision given t...
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