Germany Has Identified Preferred Successor for ECB’s Weidmann, Newspaper Says

3 December 2021

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The German government has decided on its preferred candidate to replace outgoing Bundesbank President and European Central Bank Governing Council member Jens Weidmann, according to the Financial Times on Thursday.

According to the FT, the decision is in favour of Joachim Nagel, who since November of last year has been Deputy Head of the Banking Department at the Bank for International Settlements, but who previously spent almost two decades at the Bundesbank, rising to board member before leaving in 2016.

Having been responsible for IT and markets at the Bundesbank, Nagel does not have a track record of monetary policy pronouncements, this traditionally being the prerogative of the president of the German central bank.

In February 2014 Nagel, perhaps in lieu of Weidmann, gave a speech on topics normally the province of the latter, but hewed closely to traditional Bundesbank views.

‘The debate about new monetary policy measures in general only addresses the alleviation of symptoms, but not the thorough cure of the actual causes of the crisis’, Nagel said at the time. ‘The latter is not the task of central banks, but of politics.’

Weidmann, who announced his departure in October, will leave at the end of the year, ten and a half years after taking office in May 2011.