According to a newspaper report, the economist Joachim Nagel has the best chance of inheriting Jens Weidmann at the head of the Bundesbank.
As the British business newspaper Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing a person who is directly familiar with the process, the 55-year-old is the “preferred candidate”.
The FAZ had already reported on November 15 that Nagel could be the perfect compromise candidate for the post of Bundesbank President for the coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP.
So far, ECB director Isabel Schnabel and finance state secretary Jörg Kukies have also been considered possible candidates to succeed Weidmann, who announced his resignation at the end of the year in August. These are no longer in the running, reported the Financial Times, citing several people who are familiar with the discussions. A spokesman for Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz declined to comment on the report, according to the Reuters news agency.
Nagel worked for the Bundesbank for 17 years - six of them on the board.
In 2017 he moved to the board of the state development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and then in 2020 to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the bank of the central banks.
There he is deputy head of the banking division.
Incidentally, Weidmann is still chairman of the BIS board of directors.
As a representative of the Bundesbank, Nagel had criticized the ECB's bond purchases.
Weidmann has that too, so that Nagel could stand for continuity at the top of the Bundesbank.
The fact that he is an SPD member should also speak for him, especially because the SPD should have the right to propose the Bundesbank post.