Act no. 5/2009 amending the Act on the Central Bank of Iceland, no. 36/2001
New interim Governor and Deputy Governor appointed
Act no. 5/2009 amending the Act on the Central Bank of Iceland, no. 36/2001, was passed by Parliament yesterday. The new Act provides for one Governor and one Deputy Governor within the Central Bank instead of a Board of Governors. Decisions on applying the Central Bank's monetary policy instruments will henceforth be taken by a Monetary Policy Committee. In other respects, the Bank's direction will be in the hands of the Governor.
Upon the entry into force of the Act, the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland will be abolished, together with the positions of the three Governors currently sitting on the Board, including the position of Chairman of the Board of Governors.
Pursuant to the new Act, the Prime Minister has decided to appoint Svein Harald Øygard to act as interim Governor and Arnór Sighvatsson, the Bank’s Chief Economist, to act as interim Deputy Governor. The interim Governor and Deputy Governor will hold these positions until appointments have been made by the Prime Minister on the basis of advertisements, in accordance with the provisions of the Act.
Please find below the CV for Svein Harald Øygard:
Svein Harald Øygard, cand.oecon., was born in 1960. In 1985 he received a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Oslo, where his concentration was in macroeconomics.
Svein Harald served as State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance from 1990 to 1994. His fields of responsibility included macroeconomics, integration of fiscal and monetary policy, financial sector regulations, and taxation. Among other things, he led the review of Norwegian tax legislation in 1992 and was a member of the task force appointed by the Norwegian Government to examine the potential economic effects of membership to the European Union. Svein Harald participated in the teams addressing Norway’s banking and currency crisis in 1992. He was a member of the economic council of the Norwegian Labour Party until 2000.
From 1983 until 1990 Svein Harald worked in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance and the Norwegian Parliament, Storting, and for a brief period at the Norwegian central bank, Norges Bank. During his tenure with the Ministry of Finance, he was responsible for the Ministry’s inflation analysis and for providing the link between wages and price levels, on the one hand, and other macroeconomic aggregates, on the other.
Since 1995, Svein Harald has been employed by McKinsey & Company. He has worked with clients across Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He served as Director of McKinsey & Company in Norway from 2005 to 2007. In his work for McKinsey & Company, Svein Harald has concentrated on projects and policy related to the fields of energy and industry, public administration, and finance.
No. 5/2009
February 27, 2009