Michael Spencer, founder of brokerage firm Icap
First, the growing likelihood that Boris Johnson will be the next UK prime minister led to speculation that his former adviser, Gerard Lyons, could be in the frame for the top slot at the BoE.
Lyons is an experienced economist who knows the City well from stints at banks including SBC, Dai-Ichi Kangyo and Standard Chartered. He is also an advocate of Brexit, who shares Johnson’s breezy optimism about the ease with which the UK economy will overcome any obstacles created by leaving the European Union.
Lyons lacks executive experience – at a central bank or elsewhere – which would normally preclude him from consideration for running the BoE. But these are not normal times, which explains why his name is in the mix, along with more conventional candidates such as Andrew Bailey, head of the Financial Conduct Authority, and Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Bank of India.
Disdain
There was a recent report that Chris Giancarlo, the outgoing chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, would be interested in the Bank of England job.
