Press Release: IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn Names Bank of Spain's José Viñals as Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department

March 25, 2009

Press Release No. 09/87
March 25, 2009

Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), today named Bank of Spain Deputy Governor José Viñals as Financial Counsellor and Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department. Mr. Viñals succeeds Mr. Jaime Caruana, who was named recently as General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (see Press Release No. 08/297).

In a statement issued to the IMF’s Executive Board on behalf of the Managing Director, Mr. John Lipsky, First Deputy Managing Director and acting Chairman of the Board, stated:

“Mr. Viñals has extensive experience and an exceptional record of accomplishments in academia, in the Bank of Spain, and in the European Central Bank and other European central banking institutions. He has vast experience not only in monetary policymaking but also across a range of domestic and international banking and financial sector issues. I believe that his range of talents and experience makes him ideally suited to take charge of the Fund’s financial sector work at this critical time.”

Mr. Viñals, 54, who holds a PhD. in economics from Harvard University, has been Deputy Governor at the Bank of Spain since July 2006. Since joining the central bank in 1984, he has held a number of senior positions and has served on a range of advisory and policy committees at the central bank and within the European Union, including as Chairman of the European Central Bank’s International Relations Committee. A former faculty member in the Economics Department at Stanford University, he holds master’s in economics from the London School of Economics and from Harvard.

He is expected to assume his position at the IMF in mid April.

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