Nagel worked for the Bundesbank for 17 years – six of them on the board.
(Photo: Deutsche Bundesbank)
Frankfurt The economist Joachim Nagel has the best chance of succeeding Jens Weidmann at the head of the Bundesbank. According to two insiders from the Ampelkoalition, he is now the clear favorite. Most recently, Nagel, State Secretary for Finance Jörg Kukies and ECB Director Isabel Schnabel were considered the most promising candidates.
Finance State Secretary Jörg Kukies is no longer in the running. The Handelsblatt also learned from circles of the Ampelkoalition that he was too important for the designated head of government Olaf Scholz in the Chancellery. Even Isabel Schnabel should no longer have a chance, it was said in Berlin. A decision should be made by noon on Monday at the latest.
First the “Financial Times” (FT) reported on Thursday that Nagel was the “preferred candidate”. A spokesman for Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz (SPD) declined to comment on the report.
What speaks against Schnabel is that if she switched to the Bundesbank, her current position in the ECB’s executive board would become vacant and would have to be filled. This would require major staff restructuring. In the past, however, several ECB Executive Board members from Germany left office prematurely.
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Sabine Lautenschläger resigned just under two years ago, as did Jörg Asmussen and the former ECB chief economist Jürgen Stark. That had already caused a lack of understanding in other euro countries in the past.
Classic compromise candidate
Nagel is considered a compromise candidate. He is a member of the SPD and worked between his economics studies in Karlsruhe and his doctorate as a speaker for the SPD party executive in Bonn. The economist worked for the Bundesbank for 17 years – six of them on the board of directors. It is considered to be free-market and ordoliberal – which is likely to meet with approval from the traffic light coalition FDP.
Nagel is well networked in Berlin and Frankfurt. The economist has known the Bundesbank for a long time. He worked there for 17 years – six of them on the board. In 2010, he was the first self-made member of the Bundesbank to move from the position of department head to the management committee of the central bank, where he replaced the former SPD politician Thilo Sarazin. Most recently, he was responsible for the important area of markets and thus for the concrete implementation of monetary policy.
During this time he was critical of the ECB’s bond purchases. He also headed the Bundesbank’s crisis team and represented the institution on many global bodies.
Even after he left the central bank in 2017, Nagel took care of international issues on the board of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Most recently, he represented Germany on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Finance in the expert group on the development of the Capital Markets Union in the EU. Nagel is currently working for Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a kind of umbrella organization for central banks around the world. There he is Vice-Head for Banks.
Nagel had a good reputation within the Bundesbank during his work. At the time, observers attributed the fact that he left the central bank anyway because a second term in office was not certain for political reasons.
The SPD had favored him in 2014 for the then vacant Vice-Chief of the Bundesbank. At the time, however, the CDU was significantly stronger than the SPD. And she decided in favor of Claudia Buch and against Nagel. Now the political majority has changed fundamentally, from which Nagel could benefit.
More: Exchange manager Alexandra Hachmeister joins the Bundesbank