Frankfurt/Main. Who will succeed Christine Lagarde as head of the European Central Bank? The heads of state and government of the 21 euro states must find a solution soon, because the Frenchwoman has announced her resignation on February 7th. The Euro countries are supposed to nominate their candidates for the top of the ECB by this Friday, and the Eurogroup wants to take stock on Monday (November 9th).
Lagarde will only chair the two monetary policy meetings of the ECB Governing Council in December and February. Her announcement did not come unprepared; there had long been speculation that the former IMF head would leave the central bank before the end of her eight-year term in October 2027. Several names are being discussed for the successor, including Bundesbank boss Joachim Nagel. What are the chances:
The Spaniard Pablo Hernández de Cos has been running the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel since July 1, 2025, in a sense the central bank of central banks. He was previously head of the Spanish central bank (2018-2024) and in this role a member of the Governing Council of the ECB. Hernández de Cos is seen as a representative of a more loose monetary policy with lower interest rates.
The 55-year-old holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Madrid. He also has degrees in business administration and law. His career began at the Central Bank of Spain in 1997, when he joined the Research Department of the Monetary and Financial Studies Department at the Banco de España as a senior economist.
In 2004, Hernández de Cos came to Frankfurt as an advisor to the ECB Executive Board, and in 2007 he returned to the Spanish Central Bank and took over the management of the economic policy unit in the Department of Economic Analysis and Forecasts. In 2015 he was appointed Director General for Economics, Statistics and Research.
Another three years later he was promoted to head of the Spanish central bank. “In this role, he managed to restore the reputation of the Spanish central bank after a series of missteps before and during the financial crisis,” writes the news magazine “Politico”.
What speaks in Hernández de Cos's favor is that Spain has never held the presidency since the ECB was founded, says Thomas Gitzel, chief economist at VP Bank. The Spaniard had attracted attention in previous years with his tones for a loose monetary policy. “A moderate monetary politician is likely to be preferred by many governments at the moment,” says Gitzel.
The Dutchman Klaas Knot (59) was president of the Dutch central bank for 14 years - from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2025. Knot has a reputation for standing for a tight monetary policy: In the ECB Council, he openly opposed the ECB's now very loose monetary policy and is therefore in line with the Bundesbank. From December 2021 to July 2025, he was also Chairman of the Financial Stability Board FSB, which is responsible for identifying vulnerabilities in the global financial system, making suggestions for eliminating them and monitoring their implementation.
Born on April 14, 1967, Knot later studied economics at the University of Groningen and received his doctorate in economics in 1995 on the subject of “Fiscal policy and interest rates in the European Community”.
Knot gained his first experience at the Dutch Central Bank as an economist (1995-1998) and then went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington (1998-1999) before returning to the Netherlands.
Before his appointment to the top of the Dutch central bank, Knot repeatedly held various positions at the central bank, temporarily working at the supervisory authority for pensions and insurance (December 2002 to April 2004) and temporarily moving to the Ministry of Finance in his home country: from 2009 to 2011 he was deputy general treasurer and director for financial markets.
Joachim Nagel (60) has led the Deutsche Bundesbank since January 2022. The economist, who holds a doctorate, returned to his old place of work: Nagel worked for the Bundesbank for many years from 1999 onwards. Nagel joined the board at the beginning of December 2010 and was responsible for markets and information technology when he left at the end of April 2016.
The Karlsruhe native then moved to the state development bank KfW, on whose board Nagel took over responsibility for promoting developing and emerging countries. Before his appointment to the top of the Bundesbank, Nagel worked at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as deputy head of the banking department.
Europe's largest economy, Germany, has also never held the position of ECB president. However, so far there are no signs that Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) would support a move from SPD member Nagel to the ECB. The biggest obstacle is that Ursula von der Leyen's EU Commission is already in German hands. Two Germans at the top of such important institutions in Europe - that would be difficult to convey in the personnel poker in Brussels.
