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| French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde with her Irish counterpart, Brian Lenihan, at a meeting of Eurogroup finance ministers, in Brussels, March 09, 2009. |
The Financial Times’ (FT) fourth annual European finance minister of the year award reflects performances during 12 turbulent months and the 2008/2009 winner is France's Christine Lagarde and Ireland's Brian Lenihan is in last place.
The newspaper says France’s finance minister has become a star among world financial policy-makers. She not only stands out as the only woman among finance ministers and central bankers at international meetings, her background as the head of an American law firm, gives her an experience of what is called the Anglo-Saxon model, that is a contrast from the common Gallic disdain of her compatriots.
Speaking to the FT, Lagarde said: “Europe was ahead of the curve when it operated in a ‘transgressional’ mode - - in other words when we sometimes ignored the rules, when we bypassed the normal formats, when we included Great Britain in the eurogroup [meetings of finance ministers from the eurozone countries].”
Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, until last month, got a No. 2 ranking, followed by Didier Reynders of Belgium who has been in the job more than 10 years; Sweden’s Anders Borg and Italy’s Giulio Tremonti - - the former for the respect he has built during his country’s EU presidency, the latter for his relatively firm handling of Italy’s notoriously wayward public finances.
The panel acknowledge that after what it terms Lenihan's "bungled' budget in 2008, he has emerged as a big hitter at home and looks set to hold his nerve in next month's budget.
Brian Lenihan was second-last in 2008.
The FT said: "Erik Nielsen of Goldman Sachs praises Ireland’s Brian Lenihan and the bold measures Dublin took to address the country’s particularly severe economic and banking crisis. Other judges were still reeling from Ireland’s go-it-alone approach in the immediate aftermath of the Lehman collapse, and the country is still deep in crisis. Mr Lenihan, second to last in 2008, came bottom of this year’s rankings."
Last year's winner, Finland’s Jyrki Katainen, fell to 12th position in 2009, largely because of the battering his country’s export-dependent economy took during the crisis.
The 19 ministers were judged according to their political skills and the performance of their economies. The former was based on voting by a seven-strong panel of leading European economists, who ranked each according to the swiftness with which they grasped what action was required, their effectiveness in implementation, and their star potential on the international stage. Each minister was then subjected to “economic tests”, which looked at how their economy had performed during the crisis, its robustness and balance, and the control kept on fiscal policy. There was also a “credibility” test, taking account of financial markets’ perceptions of an economy’s reliability.
Members of the judging panel were: Marco Annunziata chief economist, UniCredit; Robert Bergqvist, chief economist, SEB; Jacques Delpla, member of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique, Paris; Michael Heise, chief economist, Allianz; Gilles Moec, European economist, Deutsche Bank; Erik Nielsen, chief European economist Goldman Sachs; and Peter Vanden Houte, chief eurozone economist at ING.
FT ranking of European finance ministers
Video interview: Christine Lagarde
