22 February 2012

Barnier appoints members of a High-level Expert Group on possible reforms to the structure of the EU banking sector

Background:

Commissioner Barnier has appointed the members of the High-level Expert Group set to examine structural aspects of the EU's banking sector. The decision to set up this Group was announced by Commissioner Barnier at the European Parliament in November last year. In agreement with President Barroso, Commissioner Barnier in January appointed Erkki Liikanen as the chairman. Erkki Liikanen is currently Governor of the Bank of Finland and a former member of the European Commission.

The members have been chosen on the basis of their technical expertise and professional background, and are appointed in a personal capacity. Members represent a wide range of interests, from consumers of banking services, to former providers of such services, regulators, and economists with expertise in banking, financial markets and financial regulation. Commissioner Barnier and Mr Liikanen have striven to find a balance in professional backgrounds, views, experiences as well as geography.

The Group will now start its work and will present its final report to the Commission by the end of summer 2012. It will conduct hearings and organise consultations as appropriate. Its mandate will be to determine whether, in addition to ongoing regulatory reforms, structural reforms of EU banks would strengthen financial stability and improve efficiency and consumer protection, and if that is the case it will make proposals as appropriate. Structural reforms go beyond regulating and supervising banks' behaviour and instead directly affect the structure of individual banks and the market as a whole. Such reforms could for example include prohibiting banks from carrying out some activities or requiring banks to put certain activities (e.g. taking deposits from retail customers) into separate legal entities.

Members:

Erkki Liikanen, chairman, Finland: Erkki Liikanen is Governor of the Bank of Finland and has been a member of the ECB Governing Council since 2004. He was a member of the European Commission between 1995 and 2004, first in charge of the EU budget and personnel, then for policies related to enterprise and information society. Mr Liikanen was Finance Minister in Finland from 1987 to 1990, and was then Finland's ambassador to the EU until Finland joined the EU.

José Manuel Campa, Spain: Mr Campa is Professor of financial management at IESE Business School, University of Navarra. He was State Secretary in the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Government of Spain, between 2009 and December 2011.

Louis Gallois, France: Mr Gallois is Chief Executive Officer of EADS, the European group for aerospace, defence and related services. Prior to joining EADS, he was the head of a number of companies, including the SNCF, Aerospatiale and SNECMA. Mr Gallois has held various senior posts for the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Research and Industry and the Ministry of Defence.

Monique Goyens, Belgium: Mrs Goyens is Director General of BEUC, the European consumers' organisation. In this role, she represents 42 independent national consumer associations in 31 European countries.

Jan Pieter Krahnen, Germany: Since 1995, Jan Pieter Krahnen has held the Chair of Corporate Finance at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He is also Director of the Center for Financial Studies, a non-profit research institution in Frankfurt, and CEPR research fellow in Financial Economics. He has published extensively on finance, banking, financial regulation and financial stability.

Alessandro Profumo, Italy: Mr Profumo was chief executive of UniCredit SpA between 1997 and 2010. He was previously a consultant with McKinsey. He is currently a member of the supervisory board of Sberbank, Russia's largest bank. He is also Member of Eni's Advisory Board and of Luigi Bocconi Business University.

Carol Sergeant, United Kingdom: Carol Sergeant is the chair of the HM Treasury steering group in the UK tasked with devising a suite of ‘simple’ financial products. She is a non-executive director of Secure Trust Bank, chairman of the whistle-blowing charity, Public Concern at Work, and special advisor to bank chief executives and chairmen. She was Chief Risk Officer of Lloyds Banking Group between 2004 and 2010. Prior to Lloyds she was Managing Director on the Board of the UK FSA in charge of the regulatory process and risks directorate. She started her career at the Bank of England.

Zdenek Tuma, Czech Republic: Mr Tuma is currently a director at KPMG. He was Governor of the Czech National Bank between 2000 and 2010; in this capacity he was also responsible for the supervision of the financial sector. He previously held various posts in academia as well as in the private sector.

Herman Wijffels, the Netherlands: Herman Wijffels is an economist. In 1981, he joined Rabobank as an executive director and was appointed Chair of the Executive Board in 1986. In 1999 he became Chairman of the Social-Economic Council (SER). From 2006 to 2008 he was executive director at the World Bank in Washington, DC. Since 2009 he has been professor in Sustainability and Societal Change at the Utrecht Sustainability Institute (USI) of Utrecht University.

Press release

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