Diggers & Dealers Keynote Speaker – Lord Mervyn King

CONFERENCE CALLER: Each year Diggers & Dealers provides the opportunity to hear insightful commentary on the global economic outlook from globally-respected experts who are well-informed and knowledgeable in their particular fields.

This year is no different with Lord Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England presenting this year’s Keynote Address.

Lord King has been described as being one of the world’s most respected economic influences who has worked in the global economic environment in recent times and in 2013, was rated as the 11th most influential person in the international economic and financial community.

 

Known to his friends as Lord King of Lothbury, he served as the Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of its Monetary Policy Committee from 2003 to 2013 and as the chairman of the group of major central banks at the BIS (formerly the G-10 Governors).

He was Deputy Governor from 1998 to 2003, Chief Economist and Executive Director from 1991 and a non-executive director of the Bank from 1990 to 1991.

In July of 2013, Lord King was appointed a life peer in the British House of Lords by Queen Elizabeth II for contributions to public service.

Born in 1948, Lord King studied at King’s College, Cambridge and Harvard (as a Kennedy Scholar) and taught at Cambridge and Birmingham Universities before serving as Visiting Professor at both Harvard University and MIT.

He was also a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics where he founded the Financial Markets Group.

Now he is widely acknowledged to have been one of the modern world’s most innovative and influential Central Bankers, having made many contributions to making the Bank of England a more modern, credible institution.

Both the former Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer and Philip Hildebrand, the former head of the Swiss central bank, have said King helped teach the rest of the world what independent central banking was all about.

He has profoundly changed not just the Bank of England, but central banking around the world.

As the Bank’s Chief Economist, King established its credibility as a maker of independent monetary policy.

He brought in first-rate young economists, and brought down inflation.

He popularised inflation targeting across the world. At the Bank of England he became (in the words of Kenneth Clarke, Britain’s chancellor from 1993 to 1997) the “intellectual rock” on which the new policy was built.

His regime was a success and between 1992 and 2012 retail-price inflation averaged around three per cent. Over the previous two decades it had averaged 10 per cent.

The system faced severe tests during the financial crisis, and held and today the Bank’s credibility as an inflation targeter is intact with many firms and workers still expect inflation to be close to two per cent.

We can’t wait hear what he says about us.