Online event: please register on Zoom 

The Bundesbank’s latest financial stability report found that the German banking system had weathered the pandemic well, with hardly any losses to the system. While supervisory measures were important for maintaining stability, the banks’ resilience was due in large measure to the extensive fiscal and monetary policy response from the outset of the pandemic, and substantial government aid to the corporate sector that prevented losses there from spilling over to banks. But now the challenges of exiting the pandemic must be mastered, at a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Finding a good way to exit the support measures will be vital. Even before the Ukraine crisis, financial vulnerabilities had begun to be exposed. A key concern of Director Herzberg’s presentation will be how the financial system can manage these and future risks adequately, avoiding potential underestimation of risks and achieving appropriate risk-sharing.

Valerie Herzberg is the Deputy Director General for Financial Stability at the Deutsche Bundesbank. Previously, she was the Head of International Relations at the Central Bank of Ireland. She has also served as economic advisor to Vice President of the European Commission Jyrki Katainen and President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy. She was a senior member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford in 2013-14, contributing to the Political Economy of Financial Markets programme. After graduation from the London School of Economics she spent ten years as economist at the Bank of England and was later at the International Monetary Fund. She has published widely on European financial and integration issues.

Daniel C. Hardy is currently Visiting Scholar at the Vienna University of Economics. He was previously an Academic Visitor at the European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, contributing to the European Political Economy Project. For most of his career he worked at the International Monetary Fund, dealing with economic and financial issues in industrialized, emerging market, and developing countries. His recent research has addressed topics in public sector governance; the development of the European Monetary Union and the Capital Market Union; and sovereign debt management. He studied at the universities of Oxford and Princeton.