Right stuff for the Old Lady
No oNE can accuse Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond of playing a game of favourites in the search for the next governor of the Bank of England.
The use of recruitment specialists Sapphire Partners offers a contrast with the US, where Donald Trump has been trying to stuff the Federal Reserve with supporters.
The president hit a brick wall with the withdrawal from contention of a recent nominee, pizza entrepreneur Howard Cain.
It will also be different to the European Central Bank, where Mario Draghi steps down in october this year. The choice of Europe’s most important economic official probably will be a political stitch-up orchestrated by Germany and France.
The choice of the next governor has been rendered all the more important by Brexit uncertainty. That is the reason why the Canadian incumbent Mark Carney untidily was asked to stay on, twice extending his original five years to January 2020.
The job of governor has several facets. It is to keep inflation under control without sacrificing growth. And to maintain financial stability. Carney’s achievements have been to prepare the City for Brexit, to give consumers
and businesses confidence that they will not be surprised by interest rate shifts and to strengthen the UK banking system.
He and chief economist Andrew Haldane also encouraged a more open Bank by travelling widely and dealing directly with social exclusion. Criticism of Carney is that he has been too political. That was fine when he helped to put the kibosh on Scottish independence, but he unleashed a firestorm from Brexiteers when he tilted to Remain.
There is another requirement. Britain may be only the fifth-largest economy in the world but it has one of largest financial centres. It dominates world foreign exchange dealings and is even the leading centre for trades in the Chinese renminbi.
The new governor needs to be a person with a global reputation who speaks not just for Britain but for the value of free and open global markets.
It is vitally important that a governor who understands this is approved as soon as possible, reducing the opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to select a successor.
Former Monetary Policy Committee member Danny Blanchflower, a ferocious critic of Tory austerity, is often mentioned.
It is unlikely that the headhunter will identify candidates who have not appeared on someone’s shortlist. It may, one suppose, flush out names less in the public eye, such as Harvard economist Jason Furman who worked in the obama White House.
The strongest international candidate would be Chicago professor Raghuram Rajan. Domestic runners include Haldane, deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe, Santander chairman Shriti Vadera and ofcom regulator Sharon White, formerly of the Treasury.
Science champion
FIVE years ago the Government almost made one of its most serious mistakes.
Downing Street put out the welcome mat when the American pharma giant Pfizer, headed by a Scottish expatriate Ian Read, launched a £90bn bid for leading pharma company Astrazeneca (AZ).
There followed a campaign to prevent it going the same way as many fine names in British business, from Cadbury to ICI.
As Kraft Heinz was to learn a couple of years later, when it mounted a failed bid for Unilever, Britain is no longer so easily for sale. It took a fighting Frenchman, Pascal Soriot, to see off the offer of £55 per share for AZ, a price only achieved last autumn.
At the time, AZ was in poor shape with a promising pipeline of cancer drugs based around new immunology science.
The real debate was about what kind of country Britain wants to be. Soriot triumphed by emphasising Britain’s scientific heritage and pledging a world-beating research centre in Cambridge.
Some shareholders regret they didn’t take the cash and run. But as AZ has upped the R&D spend by 18.7pc and unleashed a new range of oncology drugs – including medicine for early-stage lung cancer – the industrial wisdom of keeping it British has been demonstrated.
Big break
IT IS not just 500-1 amateur James Cahill who has overturned the odds at the Snooker World Championship at the Crucible.
HMRC reveals that exports of Britishmade snooker gear is soaring, and climbed by 35pc to £13.6m last year.
And that’s before TV rights are counted.