The Single Resolution Board is the European resolution authority for the Banking Union. On this interview, the Board Chair, Elke König, introduces all the Board members: Timo Löyttyniemi, Mauro Grande, Antonio Carrascosa, Joanne Kellermann and Dominique Laboureix. Find out more about the Single Resolution Board in http://srb.europa.eu
Elke, welcome aboard. Would you like to tell us a bit about your role here and obviously if you are excited about your new role?
Well, of course I’m excited about my new role. Firstly, I think it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime chance to really work on a start-up – because this is a start-up. And secondly, it’s a chance to contribute to the second pillar of the banking union - with that hopefully bringing more stability to the financial system and reducing the burden for tax-payers going forward.
And thankfully you’re not by yourself here in the Single Resolution Board, there are other board members.
Well, as you say, thankfully I am not by myself. It’s not just that we have other board members, we already have some members of staff and we are very grateful to the Commission because they have provided a task force that has started to set this up. Perhaps just to sketch out the board members, besides me: first of all Timo Löyttyniemi, who comes from Finland and will be the guardian of the single resolution fund, predominantly. Then we have Mauro Grande, who is Italian and was with the European Central Bank beforehand. He will take over for cross-cutting functions and also financial stability consideration. And then we have three colleagues who will be responsible for resolution planning and, if need be, resolution: first of all Dominique Laboureix from France, Antonio Carrascosa from Spain and last but not least Joanne Kellermann from the Netherlands. So we are a very diverse team. And the same holds true for the staff that is already on board and hopefully will come on board.
So I assume that there are a few challenges that you need to tackle. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about that?
I would ask you first: how much time do you have? Now, there are clearly the organisational challenges that you always have when you work with a start-up, which means mainly building up the team, building up the knowledge base of this team, getting the relationship with the national resolution authorities, with the ECB, with the Commission on a good footing and up and running. But in this case we actually have one additional challenge: whereas, for example, the ECB could build on the national competences in banking supervision, in a number of Member States resolution authorities have just been set up or are actually in the process of being set up. So here it is really a question of building it up as a knowledge base, not from scratch, but at least from a very limited basis. So, challenges en masse, but that is probably what makes it interesting and hopefully will attract a lot of people who want to join.
