Position: Bank of England Governor
Incumbent: Mervyn King
Date of Birth: March 30, 1948
Term: First term June 2003 - 2008. Re-appointed for a second term 2008 to 2013.
KEY FACTS:
-- Mervyn King joined the Bank of England as Chief Economist in 1991 and was named Deputy Governor in 1997, the same year as the Bank was given operational independence. He finally got the top job in 2003. A member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee since its creation, King is the only person to have attended every monthly policy meeting to date.
-- King's voting pattern put him on the "hawkish" end of the committee until the financial crisis escalated in 2008, when he took on a more dovish mantle. He presided over the slashing of British interest rates to a record low 0.5 percent in March 2009 and the launch of the country's unprecedented quantitative easing programme.
-- Unusually for a central bank governor, King has several times found himself in a minority on the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee. He was outvoted in August 2005 when he opposed a majority decision to cut interest rates, and in June 2007 when he voted to raise interest rates. In August 2009 he was outvoted with a dovish stance when he argued for a greater expansion of the BoE's quantitative easing program than the majority.
-- King gained a first class degree in economics from King's College, Cambridge and was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard. After graduation he taught at Birmingham University and spent a year as a visiting professor at MIT, where he worked next door to Ben Bernanke, who was an assistant professor.
-- King has welcomed the coalition government's decision to give the Bank greater regulatory powers. In his annual "Mansion House" speech in June 2009, King appeared to criticize the then Labour government for widening the Bank's regulation remit without giving it the tools to fulfill its role.
- A keen sports fan, King is an ardent Aston Villa football supporter, a patron of Worcestershire County Cricket Club and a member of the Wimbledon All England lawn tennis club.