Weber cashes in
The news that Axel Weber is to take on the chairmanship of a big European bank will shock few. Since withdrawing from the race for ECB president, he has been one of the favourites to succeed Josef Ackermann at Deutsche Bank. Only the choice of bank – UBS – surprises.
One can see the appeal of such a move. Mr Weber’s salary at UBS will dwarf what he was paid at the Bundesbank. And what he could have expected had he had been named ECB president. Read more
Weber, and cooling off periods
So, the rumours were right. Axel Weber, the former Bundesbank president, has made the jump to the private sector – although to UBS rather than Deutsche Bank as had been expected.
He will not be the only former central banker on UBS’s board of directors. Joseph Yam was previously chief executive of the Hong Kong monetary authority. But the speed of his switch to the private sector may raise eyebrows. Mr Weber only stepped down as Bundesbank president at the end of April. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
