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The Bank of International Settlement (BIS) and the Basel II accord face their greatest challenge over the next 13 months as they struggle to respond to the impacts of the current financial crisis. On Friday the BIS Board announced that the the BIS’s Chief Executive, the person chosen to manage the BIS into an uncertain future, is the man previously responsible for the creation of Basel II, Jaime Caruana. This appointment fills the vacancy created by the retirement, two month’s ago, of Malcolm Knight, General Manager between 2003 and 2008.
Caruana, a Spanish national, has been a director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department since 2006 and was Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) from 2003 to 2006, the formative years of the development of Basel II. Caruana has also been a member of the Financial Stability Forum since 2003 and was Governor of the Bank of Spain for six years, during which time he was also on the European Central Bank's Governing Council.
The BIS’s Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements announced the appointment, for a five-year term, on Friday to take effect on the 1st April 2009. The General Manager - the BIS’s chief executive officer - carries out Board policy and is responsible for the management of the BIS.
The management team under Caruana, who will now be the heads of the three main departments are Peter Dittus (General Secretariat), Stephen Cecchetti (Monetary and Economic Department) and Günter Pleines (Banking Department). The General Counsel is Daniel Lefort. The current Chairman of the Committee is Nout Wellink, President of the Netherlands Bank.
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