CARNEY
Mark

• 1. Career
• 1.1. Goldman Sachs
• 1.2. Department of Finance
• 1.3. Governor of the Bank of Canada
• 1.4. Financial crisis
• 1.5. International organization memberships
• 1.6. Governor of the Bank of England
• 1.7. Since 2020
• 1.8. Liberal Party of Canada leadership bid speculation

Mark Joseph Carney is a Canadian economist and banker who was the governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and the governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. He is chairman, and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management since 2020, and was named chairman of Bloomberg Inc., parent company of Bloomberg L.P., in 2023. He was the chair of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018. Prior to his governorships, Carney worked at Goldman Sachs as well as the Department of Finance Canada. He also serves as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Career

Goldman Sachs

Carney spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs and worked in their Boston, London, New York City, Tokyo, and Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included: co-head of sovereign risk; executive director, emerging debt capital markets; and managing director, investment banking. He worked on South Africa's post-apartheid venture into international bond markets, and was involved in Goldman's work with the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

In 2003, Carney left Goldman Sachs to join the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor. One year later, he was recruited to join the Department of Finance Canada as senior associate deputy minister, beginning that role on November 15, 2004.

Department of Finance

From November 2004 to October 2007, Carney was the senior associate deputy minister and G7 deputy in the Canadian Finance Department. He served under two finance ministers: Ralph Goodale, a Liberal and Jim Flaherty, a Conservative. During this time Carney oversaw the Government of Canada's controversial plan to tax income trusts at source. Carney was also the lead on the federal government's profitable sale of its 19 percent stake in Petro-Canada.

Governor of the Bank of Canada

In November 2007, it was announced that Carney would be appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada. He immediately left his position at the Department of Finance to serve as an advisor to the outgoing governor, David Dodge, before formally assuming Dodge's position on February 1, 2008. Carney was selected over Paul Jenkins, the senior deputy governor, who had been considered the front-runner to succeed Dodge.

Carney took on this role at the beginning of the 2007 global financial crisis. At the time of his appointment, Carney was the youngest central bank governor among the G8 and G20.

Financial crisis

Carney's actions as Governor of the Bank of Canada are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the financial crisis.

The epoch-making feature of his tenure as Governor remains the decision to cut the overnight rate by 50 basis points in March 2008, only one month after his appointment. While the European Central Bank delivered a rate increase in July 2008, Carney anticipated the leveraged-loan crisis would trigger global contagion. When policy rates in Canada hit the effective lower-bound, the central bank combatted the crisis with the non-standard monetary tool "conditional commitment" in April 2009 to hold the policy rate for at least one year, in a boost to domestic credit conditions and market confidence. Output and employment began to recover from mid-2009, in part thanks to monetary stimulus. The Canadian economy outperformed those of its G7 peers during the crisis, and Canada was the first G7 nation to have both its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment recover to pre-crisis levels.

The Bank of Canada's decision to provide substantial additional liquidity to the Canadian financial system, and its unusual step of announcing a commitment to keep interest rates at their lowest possible level for one year, appear to have been significant contributors to Canada's weathering of the crisis.

Canada's risk-averse fiscal and regulatory environment is also cited as a factor. In 2009 a Newsweek columnist wrote, "Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize."

Carney earned various accolades for his leadership during the financial crisis: he was named one of Financial Times's "Fifty who will frame the way forward", and of Time Magazine's 2010 Time 100. In May 2011, Reader's Digest named him "Editor's Choice for Most Trusted Canadian".

In October 2012, Carney was named "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012" by the editors of Euromoney magazine.

International organization memberships

On November 4, 2011, Carney was named Chairman of the Basel-based Financial Stability Board. In a statement, Carney credited his appointment to "the strong reputation of Canada's financial system and the leading role that Canada has played in helping to develop many of the most important international reforms".

The three-year term was a part-time commitment, allowing Carney to complete his term at the Bank of Canada. While there had been no indication of his priorities as chairman, on the day of his appointment the Board published a list of 29 banks that were considered sufficiently large as to pose a risk to the global economy should they fail. At his first press conference as Chairman of the FSB in January 2012, Carney laid out his key priorities for the board.

Carney served as Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements' Committee on the Global Financial System from July 2010 until January 2012.

Carney is a member of the Group of Thirty, an international body of leading financiers and academics, and of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum. Carney attended the annual meetings of the Bilderberg Group in 2011, 2012 and 2019.

Governor of the Bank of England

On November 26, 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced the appointment of Carney as Governor of the Bank of England. He succeeded Sir Mervyn King on July 1, 2013. He was the first non-Briton to be appointed to the role since the Bank of England was established in 1694. The Bank of England was given additional powers from 2013, such as the ability to set bank capital requirements.

Prior to taking up the post, Carney had already indicated disagreement with the Bank of England's Executive Director of Financial Stability Andy Haldane, specifically on leverage ratios and on bank break-ups. He has been quoted as saying that Haldane does not have a "proper understanding of the facts" on bank regulation. He was thought to have been offered a total pay package of about £624,000 ($844,000 USD) per year, approximately £100,000 ($135,000 USD) more per year than his predecessor.

Since 2020

Carney was appointed as United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance as he prepared to step down as governor of the Bank of England in March 2020. In January 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Carney to the position of finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow; at that time the conference was scheduled for November 2020 but it was later postponed to November 2021.

As of October 2020, Carney is vice chairman at Brookfield Asset Management where he leads the firm's environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact fund investment strategy. In February 2021, Carney had to retract an earlier claim that the $600 billion Brookfield Asset Management portfolio was carbon neutral. He based his claim on the fact that Brookfield has a large renewable energy portfolio and "all the avoided emissions that come with that”. The claim was criticized as accounting tricks as avoided emissions do not counteract the emissions from investments in coal and other fossil fuels responsible for Brookfield's carbon footprint of about 5,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

In February 2021, Carney joined the board of fintech company Stripe. As of March 2021, Stripe was valued at $95 billion.

Carney helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. He acts as the group's Co-Chair.

Since 2022 Carney has also served as an advisor to Watershed, a climate tech company founded by Stripe alumni.

In August 2023, Carney was named by Michael Bloomberg as chair of the new board of directors for Bloomberg L.P. as part of a broader reshuffle of the company's leadership.

In October 2023, Carney endorsed the UK Labour Party's Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer in a video following Reeves' speech at the Labour Party conference that year. 

Liberal Party of Canada leadership bid speculation

Carney has been touted as a possible successor to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He has expressed opinions on some of the Trudeau government's policies. In October 2023, Carney, a staunch supporter of the nationwide carbon tax in Canada, criticized the government's three-year carbon tax exemption on heating oil in Atlantic Canada. Carney also criticized the government's 2024 federal budget, which he argued did not prioritize economic growth.