Megan Greene to replace Silvana Tenreyro on Bank of England’s rate-setting committee this summer

Megan Greene has been appointed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting committee, replacing top dove Silvana Tenreyro from 5 July.

Greene will join the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) from consultancy Kroll, where she has been global chief economist and a regular columnist for the Financial Times.

The Treasury announced the decision today, praising Greene for her “wide experience across financial markets and the real economy”, which “will bring valuable new expertise to the MPC”.

In a recent column in the pink broadsheet, she used the Eagles song “Hotel California” to describe quantitative easing – central banks’ printing money via bond purchases – as a measure which can be paused but ultimately never really taken off the table entirely.

“I’m honoured and thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to the policy debate at the Bank of England as an external member of the MPC. It will be a privilege and a challenge to help address some of the key monetary policy challenges of our time,” Greene said today.

Greene will be an external member of the MPC, meaning she can retain most of her existing duties. She is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and a board member of the Academic Advisory Committee at the San Francisco Fed.

Outgoing MPC member Tenreyro has emerged as the Bank’s loudest backer of keeping monetary policy loose since joining the group in July 2017.

Inflation has raged to 10.4 per cent and has been in the double digits since September.

Tenreyro has voted to keep interest rates – which have risen eleven times in a row to a post-financial crisis high of 4.25 per cent – unchanged at each of the last two meetings.

Tenreyro’s dovish mantle is likely to be taken up by recently appointed MPC member Swati Dhingra, who also rallied behind leaving rates alone at the Bank’s last meeting.

Bank governor Andrew Bailey, who casts the deciding vote if the MPC is tied on what to do with interest rates, said Tenreyro “has made a tremendous contribution to the work of the MPC over the past six years. I would like to extend my thanks and wish her all the best for the future.”

The MPC is made up of nine members who convene for two days every month or so to decide on whether to raise or reduce borrowing costs in the UK economy. They can also leave them unchanged.

Their next meeting is on 11 May and will be accompanied by new forecasts on where the UK economy is heading.