Denmark has picked Christian Kettel Thomsen, a vice president at the European Investment Bank, as the Nordic country’s new central bank governor.
(Bloomberg) — Denmark has picked Christian Kettel Thomsen, a vice president at the European Investment Bank, as the Nordic country’s new central bank governor.
The economist, who started his career as a ship’s cook, will be tasked to defend the krone’s peg to the euro, the central bank’s main policy mandate. Denmark is struggling with price increases close to 10%, but the central bank has no inflation target.
The Danish national will start Feb. 1, replacing the retiring Lars Rohde, the business ministry said on Friday. Kettel Thomsen, 63, pledged to protect the peg and work to ensure financial stability, according to a statement.
Kettel Thomsen is hard working, thorough and with a problem-solving attitude, according to a 2016 portrait by Danish media Altinget, based on interviews with his friends and former colleagues. He was also characterized as calm and, especially during his early years, as somewhat quiet and introverted. He has previously worked as a high-ranking official at the Danish prime minister’s office as well as at the finance ministry.
When Kettel Thomsen was a teenager, he worked for a few years as a ship’s cook at Denmark’s biggest company, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, before gaining an economics degree at the University of Copenhagen.
Outgoing governor Rohde, 68, announced in September he would retire in early 2023 after overseeing the longest negative-rate experiment in history, which started in 2012. The central bank’s key interest rate went positive late last year as Nationalbanken tracked rate hikes by the European Central Bank. He has recently identified high inflation as the biggest threat to the AAA rated economy.
Still, Denmark has hiked less than the ECB due to the krone’s strength against the euro, and the Danish central bank may be forced to stick with that tactic during 2023, according to some economists.
–With assistance from Thomas Hall and Jonas Cho Walsgard.
(Adds details about Kettel Thomsen in fifth, sixth paragraph)
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