Long known as “super Mario” for his adroit stewardship of the Banca d’Italia – where he was in a more or less permanent battle with the profligate ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi – the 64-year-old’s main job is to save the euro from the collapse that ...

Mark J Carney has a CV that any central banker would die for. Having succeeded to the top job at the Bank of Canada in late October 2007 – that is, just before the financial crisis – he steered it through the turmoil without a single bank fail...

One thing Dominique Strauss-Kahn has done for the IMF is put it on the front pages. Until the French economist and politician became managing director nearly four years ago, turning it into a powerhouse of geo-finance before ending up on rape charges in N...

Uncle Sam’s credit isn’t what it was. When Standard & Poor’s put a question mark over the medium-term future of the dollar by placing it on negative watch, it meant the greenback could lose its historic triple A status if the US econ...

Few would deny that freezing the assets of fallen or besieged dictators during the turmoil in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was a good and important decision. The problem is that it happened so quickly that it is obvious the various governments knew all the ti...

In some of the luxury-watch boutiques of Paris, you can hardly move for Asian – particularly Chinese and Indian – buyers. They’re cheerfully paying thousands of euros for handmade, horological masterpieces from Switzerland. In some store...

At roughly the same time as the head of the Delhi Commonwealth Games organising committee, Suresh Kalmadi, was patting himself on the back for conducting the event “really well,” prime minister Manmohan Singh was appointing a high-level commit...

Wall Street before the Crash of 1929? No, Nigeria. Or, at least, Nigeria before Lamido Sanusi became governor of its central bank last year.Outwardly, Nigeria is seen as a country with a well-capitalised banking system riding an oil boom. The second-large...

Four days before the 110bn euro bail-out of Greece, president of the ECB Jean-Claude Trichet was airing his thoughts in Illinois about how best to deal with financial crises. He’s certainly seen a few in his time as a central banker par excellence. ...

Apart from being told the forensic accounting team has just uncovered a major fraud in the securities-trading floor, probably the last thing the boss of a French bank wants is an invitation to a meeting with finance minister Christine Lagarde. At the last...