FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Spain’s Margarita Delgado has come out ahead of Germany’s Claudia Buch at informal parliamentary hearings for the job of top supervisor at the European Central Bank, two sources at the hearings told Reuters.
The ECB is seeking the European Parliament’s input to choose the next chair of the ECB’s Single Supervisory Board from a shortlist comprised of Delgado and Buch.
The winner will succeed Italy’s Andrea Enria as the ECB’s chief supervisor on Jan. 1 and oversee Europe’s biggest banks at a time of upheaval due to a surge in interest rates and competition from tech firms.
Delgado, Spain’s deputy central bank governor, impressed European lawmakers by displaying deep knowledge of banking matters and experience as a supervisor, the sources said.
Buch, the Bundesbank’s vice-president, also left a good impression but did not go into the same level of detail on supervisory issues, one of the sources added.
The informal hearings were held by the coordinators of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee — that is the heads of each parliamentary group, the sources said.
No vote was taken and it will be up the committee’s chair, Irene Tinagli, to communicate the outcome of the hearings to ECB President Christine Lagarde, the sources added.
Spokespeople for the Bank of Spain, the Bundesbank and the ECB declined to comment.
The ECB’s Governing Council will pick the winner in September.
She will then need to be approved by the European Parliament and confirmed by the Council of the European Union to succeed Enria as the ECB’s supervisor in chief on Jan. 1.
(Reporting By Francesco Canepa and Balazs Koranyi; Additional by Jesus Aguado in Madrid and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Brussels, Editing by William Maclean)
